


ie ee a 
(Eo B'S. 2... SS es =a __  e  a  e ___ ee a | oe a er a 


Se eS — B | te ee es 


8 | 
a 


as, ND i 


Wir 
NMiiy (2 Ph 


ni 4S 
yy & S 
: n LING TY meq 


* 
Oo. 


4, 
Me 
Tea 


MZ, 
At Teripy ys ne’ 


a 
2, 


MN ny 
ot 


a Se ee ae a se 


Occidens 


fr 
g 


aa ! 


“4 











‘ Yall, Meg Zz 
Aye yyw ai if 


As TT) = 


Milliaria communia \ 


40) 5 2 


5 R 0 
Clarentius Hornung, Excudit 
J 
































‘ 















2: aw Sevail’ .eyayoT baelal cA I 
at inbids it, spp scdinmi¥- 2 


4 # 
— Sr, = 


t obese peeks a4 T Tenet uotamA adit - 3 
~ } oy F on eee. ar ¥ a 
» toed wap 229, 50 S51 DUT BUILT f. 

a ae a 
i AMIRIAL VISIT | 


tO asait 








Leh tienilatt Yo tig 4 eat Si: 
fr 
4 


many 2 a 
© anda Sef wot nua odT G - 


ens ities acd} ol Oe 







Sree ~ 
: agaaryy adr i 


c- * tt 
} ak wf 4 
| s >t ve 
Sinn: hy ini, bale eS 
soley Seva 


st it) siakiti db mrs D nal e, 
Vi aiilet 25 stort gv. wien 


fe edeinita airy inoteiersht to cis WH oe. 
* etaasio ¥ ip? + asbsl aioited “<6-86 





ae Bm 


26 
27 
28 


The Works of 
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 
South Seas Edition 


An Inland Voyage. Travels with a Donkey. 


Virginibus Puerisque. Ethical Papers. Edinburgh: Pictur- 
esque Notes. 


New Arabian Nights. 

The Amateur Emigrant. The Silverado Squatters. 
Familiar Studies of Men and Books. Criticisms. 
Treasure Island. 

Prince Otto. 

The Dynamiter. 

Plays. 

Dr, Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Other Stories. Fables. 
Kidnapped. 

The Merry Men and Other Tales. 

Memories and Portraits. Random Memories. 


Poems (Volume I—A Child’s Garden of Verses, Under- 
woods, Songs of Travel, Moral Emblems). 


Poems (Volume JI—Ballads, New Poems). 


Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin. Records of a Family bf 
Engineers. 


The Black Arrow. 

The Master of Ballantrae. 

The Wrong Box. The Body-Snatcher. 
In the South Seas. 

The Wrecker. 

David Balfour. 


Island Nights’ Entertainments. The Misadventures of John 
Nicholson. 


The Ebb-Tide. Some Unfinished Stories. 

St. Ives. 

Vailima Papers. A Footnote to History. 
Essays on Literature, on Nature. Juvenilia. 
Weir of Hermiston. Some Unfinished Stories. 


29-32 Letters, Index to Volumes, 


THE WRECKER 


BY 


ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 





Vv ¢* 


¥ y 
iy 


NEW YORK 


CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 
1925 


Copyright, 1905, 1922, 1924, 1925, by 
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 
Copyright, 1891, by Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne 


Printed in the United States of America 






CONTENTS 


Lloyd Osbourne 


Mrs. R. L. Stevenson 


cb Written in collaboration. with Lloyd Osbourne 


PAGE 
1X 


XVli 








‘ 
a 
A wails 
: 
‘ 
; 
é 









ae a 


couse | 





STEVENSON AT FORTY 
By Luioyp OsBouRNE 


N Apemama house of the kind corresponding to a 
“smart, attractive, bijou little residence ” with us, 
is a sort of giant clothes basket of much the same colour 
and wattle, with a peaked roof, and standing on stilts 
about a yard high. With a dozen pairs of human legs 
under it, you can steer it to any spot you like—provided 
it is level—and begin your modest housekeeping without 
further fuss. 

We started ours in Apemama with four such houses, 
forty-eight pairs of legs, and the king, Winchester in 
hand, firing in the direction—but over the head—of any- 
one who seemed backward. It was extremely disturb- 
ing at first to see that loaded rifle pointed hither and 
thither, and occasionally going off with a terrific report; 
but as nobody was ever hurt, and as the work certainly 
continued with feverish briskness, we were soon won 
over to think it quite a help. 

Amid occasional shots, and a great deal of jabber and 
consultation, our little settlement was finally arranged 
to our general liking; and near—but not too near—a 
grove of palms. ‘Too near would have brought us 
within range of falling cocoanuts, which in a storm not 
Infrequently kill people. Then a large shed came stag- 
gering in that was to serve as our dining-room; and 
a smaller shed by way of a kitchen; and the king, hand- 
ing his rifle with a negligent air to a trembling at- 
tendant, and ordering all the natives to withdraw to a 
little distance, walked in a big circle around the settle- 
ment and declared it tabooed during our stay. 

To pass that invisible line meant death, but whether 


1x 


STEVENSON AT FORTY 


from the rifle or the outraged gods was never very clear; 
but the important thing was that nobody ever did cross 
it except the king, who was privileged; and an equally 
privileged and very solemn old fellow in a mat, who 
brought us every morning a dozen large shells of 
cocoanut sap, which tasted like treacle and water; and 
three giggling, laughing, almost naked young women, 
who kept us supplied with fresh water in paraffin tins, 
but whose principal function was to drink the syrup, 
which we did not like very much, but scarcely dared to 
countermand. 

We had said good-bye to the Equator, which had 
sailed away for three weeks on her own affairs, and 
were now absolutely alone on this rarely visited coral 
island, with the prospect—were our ship lost—of re- 
maining for many months until some chance wayfarer 
of the sea might push her nose into our lagoon. Of one 
thing, however, we could be sure—that wayfarer would 
never be the missionary vessel Morning Star. King 
Tembinoka was an out-and-out heathen, who had 
dupliciously kept a missionary until he could learn 
English, and then had dismissed him with an empnatic 
warning never to come back. ‘Tembinok’, as his name 
was more often contracted to, was the Napoleon of this 
part of the world, and had had to be checked by men-of- 
war from conquering the whole Gilbert group. When he 
warned anybody it meant something; there was always 


a pistol or two concealed in the folds of his voluminous. 


clothes; and his reputation, besides, was that of a fear- 


less and ferocious savage, whom to cross was to risk | 


your life. 
About forty-five, of medium height, he was an enor- 
mously fat man with a strongly aquiline nose, and an 


expression of remarkable intelligence and cunning; and ~ 
was not unsuggestive of some medieval Italian prince, - 
both in his complexion—which was scarcely darker than 
a Sicilian’s—and the réle he played in hfe. He was 
judge, jury, law-giver, commander-in-chief, and un- 
questioned despot of three populous islands, and was a — 


xX 


STEVENSON AT FORTY 


past-master in kingcraft, both in its guile and in its 
public spirit. Christianity as subversive of his author- 
ity he had put aside as “ good for kings but bad for 
common people”; and in the same spirit of self-im- 
provement with which he had welcomed the missionary, 
he consented to receive Stevenson after it had been ex- 
plained that the latter’s stay was of a temporary nature 
only. 

We were very happy in our little camp, which was 

delightful in every respect except for the flies. Never 
were there so many flies; flies, flies, flies in thousands 
and millions; and no place to escape them outside your 
mosquito net. In desperation my mother made a net of 
prodigious size, a veritable house of mesh, which we 
hung in the dining-shed, and not only took all our meals 
under it, but did all our writing as well. Lest I should 
disturb Stevenson, who used the table, I built a little 
erection of camera-boxes by way of a desk for myself, 
and squatted uncomfortably in a corner. Here a large 
part of The Wrecker was written, and in that collabora- 
tion, in spite of my cramped legs, I spent many of the 
pleasantest hours of my life. 

It was exhilarating to work with Stevenson; he was 
so appreciative, so humorous—brought such gaiety, 
camaraderie, and goodwill to our joint task. We never 
had a single disagreement as the book ran its course; 
it was a pastime, not a task, and I am sure no reader 
ever enjoyed it as much as we did. Well do I remember 
him saying: “ It’s glorious to have the ground ploughed, 
and to sit back in luxury for the real fun of writing— 
which is rewriting.” In the evening, when myriads 
of flies had given way to myriads of mosquitoes, and 
while we sat smoking round the lamp, safe within our 
net, he would review my work, read such of it as he 

had re-written, and brightly discuss the chapter to 
come. Am I wrong in thinking that some of that zest 
is to be found in The Wrecker? It was conceived in 
such high spirits, and with so much laughter and enter- 
tainment. Every page of it was a joy—to us. 

x] 


STEVENSON AT FORTY 


Our diet left much to be desired. Apemama was the 
only coral island I have ever known where fish was 
scarce. I don’t know why, but there was almost none— 
not, at least, during our stay; and we were so tired of 
tinned food that we had to fall back on salt beef and 
pork, which Ah Fu, who was an indefatigable sports- 
man, eked out with endless wild chickens—tame chick- 
ens run wild—which he spent many afternoons in shoot- 
ing with an ardour we often regretted. 

Nothing more tasteless than those chickens could be 
imagined, but perhaps it was not to be wondered at con- 
sidering their food was principally the long, slimy slugs 
that were to be found on the beach, or anything in the 
way of a dead shark, or a battered jelly-fish. Ah Fu 
fried them, grilled them, curried them, minced them; 
made them into game-pies, and heaven only knows what 
all—but the same seagull flavour was always there. 
Our flour was weevily, and in spite of careful sifting 
there were always dozens of little black threads in our 
bread, which when new was our greatest luxury, and 
which we buttered from a bottle. Butter, of course, in 
that heat was a liquid. Our rice was as decayed as the 
flour, and similarly speckled. But we had plenty of 
good Californian claret, and on rare occasions sump- 
tuous meals of turtle steaks and soup. The only fresh 
vegetables to be obtained were enormous edible roots, 
allied to the depressing yam family, and weighing from 
twenty to forty pounds apiece. These, when boiled and 
pounded into a paste and liberally seasoned, were not 
altogether unpalatable. Then, of course, we had fresh 
cocoanuts, the water of which was not only delicious, 
but must have served to keep us in health. 

We seldom walked anywhere except to the seaward 
side of the island, about half a mile distant. It was 
extraordinarily wild and solitary; nobody ever seemed 
to come here except our slave-girls, who trailed after 
us far behind, frolicking like puppies. Possibly they 
had been ordered to follow any of us leaving the camp. 
But ordered or not, they always did; and their favourite 


X11 


STEVENSON AT FORTY 


diversion was to strip off their last shred of clothing 
and crowd, all three of them, into some wretched little 
mud-puddle of fresh water on the way; and with shouts 
of laughter take what they considered a bath. 

The seaward beach was always cool, and had the 
added advantage of being without flies or mosquitoes; 
one could stroll or loll here for hours, gazing at the 
fleecy banks of cloud and fanned by the breeze. It 
must have been tabooed; otherwise it would be im- 
possible to account for its isolation; and probably at 
the behest of some dead and gone king, instigated by a 
witch-doctor. Native witch-doctors, like our own, were 
apt to find something abhorrent to the gods in any- 
thing pleasant. There are many such unexplainable 
taboos in the Pacific; taboos that are absolutely sense- 
less, but which are nevertheless respected. But it was 
certainly very agreeable for us to have the beach all 
to ourselves, for the natives of Apemama were, as a 
rule, a dour sort of people, who gazed at us loweringly 
and never made any advances. If you petted a child— 
the best of all ways in most islands of starting an 
acquaintance—they would give you very black looks. 
I suspect they were grinding under the king’s domina- 
tion, and needed but a spark to set them off. 

I have included Apemama in my papers as it was 
here Stevenson made two very important decisions. 
The first, an abandonment of the plan to buy a schooner 
of his own—which The Wrecker had been originally 
projected to pay for; and the second, the realization 
that if he were to make his home permanently in the 
Pacific it would have to be within reach of mails and 
amid a certain civilization. Our weeks of trading in 
the Equator had shown him the seamy side of such a 
life—the tricks, the false scales, the bamboozling and 
chicanery that were customary in dealing with the 
natives, who themselves were irritatingly dishonest. 
Thus our trim and rakish trading schooner, the North- 
ern Light, melted away into a dream of the might-have- 
been; and with it her romantic headquarters—that 


xill 


STEVENSON AT FORTY 


“island of our own ”—with all its unforeseen incon- 
veniences. In the light of R. L. 8.’s new knowledge, 
his choice had narrowed to Suva, Honolulu, Papiete or 
Apia, all of them in regular communication with the 
outside world; and as Samoa was the only conspicuous 
independent group left in the Pacific, and was renowned 
besides for its attractive and uncontaminated people, 
it was naturally this group that began to loom before us 
as our future home. Soon, indeed, we were studying 
the Samoan grammar, and building fresh castles in the 
alr. 

Meanwhile, we were growing increasingly anxious 
about the Equator. The three weeks had become six, 
and there was still no sign of her. Our stores were al- 
most exhausted. Every day Ah Fu would say: “I 
think welly soon he all finish” in regard to some es- 
sential of life, now rapidly declining to zero. Was the 
Equator lost? Had she struck a rock in one of those 
perilous lagoons, and torn her bottom out? The un- 
certainty was trying, and we all became rather grave— 
except Ah Fu, who shot those dreadful chickens more 
assiduously than ever, and seemed to enjoy our possible 
dependence on his gun. 

R. L. S., with some misgiving, explained the matter 
to the king. Had he any stores to spare, and might we 
draw on them? The king beamed at the request; it 
seemed to flatter him beyond measure to be asked such 
a favour. With a truly regal gesture he put his store- 
houses at our disposal. Their interiors presented an 
extraordinary sight as Ah Fu and I went into them to 
choose what we needed. Not only was there beef and 
pork, flour and rice, sugar, tea, coffee and other staples 
in prodigal profusion, but crates of mirrors, a large 
rocking-horse, French clocks with gilt cupids, perambu- 
lators, cut-glass and vases, hand-cultivators, plated 
silver candelabra, silk parasols, framed chromos, toy 
steam engines, ornate lamps, surgical instrument cases, 
tea-baskets, sewing machines—everything, in fact, that 
had ever caught Tembinok’s fleeting fancy in the trade- 


X1V 


STEVENSON AT FORTY 


room of a ship; and all tumbled in pell-mell, and some 
of it scarcely unpacked, as though once bought and 
placed here it had passed for ever from his mind. As 
far as these objects had anything in common, it was a 
general glitter and brightness. Apparently he had 
pointed his finger at anything that shone, and had said, 
““T take that.” 

A few days afterwards a message from him brought us 
all in panting haste to his settlement. A vessel was 
coming in, and of course we were certain it was the 
Equator, and were correspondingly elated. But as she 
rose over the horizon of the vast lagoon, our glances 
revealed her to be a stranger. What a disappointment! 
It seemed almost unbearable, but it was thrilling never- 
theless to see that big unknown schooner sail in, and to 
hear the hoarse rush of her anchor-chain as we awaited 
her in a boat. 

“Ship ahoy! ” 

“ Ahoy, there! ” 

“What’s your name, and where from?” 

“The H. L. Tiernan, Crawford and Co., Captain 
Sachs—from Jaluit and Big Muggin. Who are you?” 

“Stevenson of the Hquator, three weeks overdue from © 
the South. Any news of her, captain? ”’ 

“ Not a thing. Come aboard.” 

The Tiernan brought with her a new perplexity for us 
—should we try to charter her fcr Samoa, or should we 
gamble on the Hquator’s return? Were the latter in- 
deed lost we might be marooned for half a year or more 
on our strip of coral. R.L.S. over our glasses of warm 
beer went straight to the point; how much did he want 
—that brisk little whiskered captain in pyjamas—to 
carry us to Samoa. 

Fortunately for us his price was too high, although 
R. L. S. remained a long time in indecision before 
finally refusing it. But if we did not sail in the Tver- 
nan we at least drew liberally on her well-stocked trade- 
room, buying, amongst other things, a dozen cases of a 
superb Pontet-Canet, and several very diminutive and 


XV 


STEVENSON AT FORTY 


exceedingly chubby barrels of the most appetizing 
corned beef I have ever tasted. The king, too, was 
repaid generously and in kind for the stores we had 
drawn from him, and figured in two jolly dinners where 
many champagne corks flew—our dinner to the Tvernan 
and the Tiernan’s dinner to us,—amid songs and merri- 
ment and all that good fellowship which was such a part 
of South Sea life. 

Then she sailed away, to capsize subsequently in a 
squall, and drown a big portion of her complement; 
with a harrowing experience for her survivors, who 
nearly died of hunger and thirst before they reached 
land in her whaleboat. We often congratulated our- 
selves afterwards that Captain Sachs’ terms had been 
so high; had they been more moderate we might all have 
perished. 

Not long afterwards we were gladdened by the sight 
of the Equator, which had been delayed by light airs 
and calms on her way back from Arorai Island. With 
what joy we shook our shipmates’ hands, and crowded 
round the table in her stuffy little cabin! It was home 
to us, and we looked about those familiar surroundings, 
small and mean though they must have been, with an 
ecstatic contentment. Home is home, no matter where 
it is, and our hearts expanded at regaining ours. 

The next day we were packed up and aboard, and 
ready to sail with the outgoing tide. 

The king at parting grasped Stevenson’s hand in both 
his own, and said, “‘ Stevenson, you are a ver’ good man. 
I think you are the best man I ever know,” and with a 
pathos that was not a little moving, spoke of how he 
would always think of him, and remember his visit 
until he died. 

Good-bye, Apemama! 


PREFACE 
By Mrs. R. L. STEvENSON 


N Christmas day, 1888, we left Tahiti in the yacht 
Casco, and after a wild voyage of thirty days’ 
duration arrived at Honolulu, with the intention of re- 
turning to England by way of America after a brief 
period of rest. ‘‘ We will start next week,” he said; 
“we will start next month,’—delaying our departure 
on any pretext, for we knew that once back in England 
our South Sea rovings would be over for ever. Our 
hearts followed every trading ship that left Honolulu. 
When the missionary vessel, The Morning Star, began 
to get ready for sea we could bear it no longer, and 
applied for passage to the Kingsmills. Knowing the 
life would be rougher than anything we had yet ex- 
perienced, and it being evident that my mother-in-law, 
wearying for home, was disappointed by the change in 
our plans, it was decided she should go back to Scotland 
to wait there for our final return. 

While my husband was trying to arrange matters with 
The Morning Star,—many difficulties were made,—he 
heard of a trading schooner, the Equator, bound for the 
Kingsmills. The more we learned of the Equator, the 
more eager we were to sail in her. We found the owner, 
Mr. Wightman of San Francisco, most obliging and 
liberal, and soon concluded a bargain with him by which 
we chartered the Equator, securing unusual privileges. 

My husband’s intention was to visit the Kingsmills, 
then Ponape, thence to Manila and to China, where we 
would take passage for England. The regular trading 
round of the Hquator would carry us to Butaritari in 
the Kingsmills, and possibly to Ponape. We thought 


XVll 


PREFACE 


we might be dropped at either of these ports to take our 
chance of picking up a vessel en route for China or 
Manila. By the “charter party ” of the Equator we 
agreed to pay a fixed sum down for the trip from 
Honolulu to Butaritari and through the Kingsmill 
group, with the proviso that whenever the ship’s anchor 
went down, if for no more than five minutes, my hus- 
band should have the right to hold the ship there for 
three days without extra charge. At the same time we 
always tried to consider the owner’s interests, not al- 
lowing ours to clash with his. 

While we were submerged in preparations for the 
voyage, Honolulu was thrilled by the landing of a num- 
ber of castaways picked up on Midway Island by a 
passing vessel. This, in itself, was not so extraordinary, 
but the circumstances were unusual and mysterious. 
The story, which was far from convincing, as told by 
the captain of the wrecked ship, a barque called the 
Wandering Minstrel, was that he had fitted out his ves- 
sel in Hong Kong for the purpose of catching sharks. 
He meant, he said, to make spurious cod-liver oil from 
the livers of the sharks, and sell the dried fins to the 
Chinese. There were many discrepancies and evasions 
in his tale that I have forgotten; but it was plain that 
fishing for sharks was not the sole object of the Wan- 
dering Minstrel, The wages of the sailors, for one 
thing, were to be far beyond the usual rate of payment. 

Almost nothing was saved from the stores of the 
Wandering Minstrel; the castaways were soon in des- 
perate circumstances, and in no condition to make terms 
with a ship that answered their signals of distress. The 
captain of the rescuing vessel first ascertained exactly 
what amount of money had been saved from the wreck; 
it was just this sum, several thousand dollars—com- 
prising all the sailors’ wages as well as the entire means 
of the captain—that the stranger demanded as his price 
for carrying the miserable creatures to the nearest 
civilised port, where they were dumped, penniless, on 
the wharf. My husband tried in vain to solve the mys- 


XVlll 


BY MRS. R. L. STEVENSON 


tery of the Wandering Minstrel; and it was more or less 
in his mind when we started on our new cruise. 

The Equator was a tiny boat to brave the seas upon, 
being a schooner of only sixty-four tons register; but 
it was soundly built, and the captain, Denny Reid, was 
a skilful mariner. I have just been reading a surpris- 
ing article, published in the Westminster Budget of 
February 22, 1895, by Lieut. Frank L. G. Harden, 

‘ supercargo of the Equator,” entitled, “ The Dynasty 
of the Shark: a Personal Reminiscence of Robert Louis 
Stevenson.” I never before heard of Lieut. Frank L. G. 
Harden, and he was certainly not supercargo of the 
Equator when we sailed in her. The captain was ex- 
pected to attend to all business himself, and sold his 
goods in person from behind his counter in the trade 
room. 

We took with us from Honolulu a Chinaman, named 
Ah Fu, whom we had picked up in the Marquesas. It 
seemed a good chance for Ah Fu to get back to his 
native land, as he wished to do, our intention then being 
to end our cruise in China. We also thought he might 
be useful to us, as indeed he was,—actually saving the 
ship one night in a storm, and, ineidentally, every life 
on board. The Equator’s cook was a runaway college 
lad, named McDonald, who knew Greek, but was an in- 
different hand with the pots and pans. After one week 
of McDonald he was deposed in favour of Ah Fu. But 
a week of Ah Fu, whose really good French cooking did 
not please the captain, brought the reinstatement of 
McDonald. For the rest of the voyage, which lasted 
about three months, Ah Fu and McDonald were con- 
signed to the galley, alternate weeks. An artistic rivalry 
springing up between the two, we were treated to some 
wild inventions in the way of new dishes. 

On our outward run we had true Pacific weather— 
perfect days and glorious nights—that swept us straight — 
on our course. The little schooner, lying so low in the 
water, brought us close to the sea with a sort of inti- 
macy ‘that those on large ships, especially steamers, can 


XIX 


PREFACE 


never know. We began to feel that the sea belonged to 
us and we to the sea; and in our happiness remembered, 
with some qualms, the two importunate Belgians and 
the anemic young Englishman who had begged per- 
mission to accompany us in any capacity. Years later 
I found the Englishman in London, managing a pros- 
perous candy store on Regent Street. We learned after- 
wards that the Belgians were no better than pirates. 
They would take passage on a schooner from one island 
to another, and poison all on board just before making 
port, where they would sell the schooner and repeat the 
process. Unfortunately for their schemes, they allowed 
the cook of a French vessel to survive long enough to 
lodge information against them. After having been 
tried and sentenced to death in Manila, they somehow 
escaped execution, but are now safe behind the walls of 
a French prison. 

After ten heavenly days my husband determined to 
make his home for ever in the islands, and to that end 
projected the purchase of a schooner, to be commanded 
by Captain Reid, which was to be half-yacht, half- 
trader, and wholly self-supporting. It was not our in- 
tention to live on board the vessel indefinitely, but to 
pick it up at intervals, making it a sort of floating-home 
to which we could constantly return. Elaborate plans 
were drawn, with the enthusiastic co-operation of Cap- 
tain Reid, for a top-sail schooner of ninety tons to be 
called the Northern Light. All details were arranged, 
even to the rifle racks, the patent davits, the steam 
launch, the library, and the price—fifteen thousand 
dollars. 

My husband and my son had been continually recur- 
ring, in their talk, to the mystery of the Wandering 
Minstrel; it now struck them that they might col- 
laborate on a novel, founded on the episode of the 
wreck, which should bring in the necessary sum. One 
fine moonlight night, the fresh trade wind blowing in 
their faces, the two men sat late on deck, inventing the 
plot of The Wrecker. My husband, his mind filled with — 


XX 





BY MRS. R. L. STEVENSON 


this new and exciting enterprise, changed his plans, 
determining to give up all the proposed Equator cruise, 
except through the Kingsmills, and charter the schooner 
thence to Samoa. Samoa was chosen because it pos- 
sessed a good service of mail steamers, making serial 
publication of The Wrecker possible. We were to stop 
in Samoa until the fifteen thousand dollars were earned 
and the schooner bought. 

Our first port in the Kingsmills was Butaritari. We 
stayed there some six weeks, while the Hquator roamed 
about the group, buying copra. Captain Reid had in- 
structions from Mr. Wightman to make the voyage as 
pleasant for us as possible; but his own kind, generous, 
and delightful nature needed no official promptings from 
his employer. He was a small, fiery Scotch-Irishman, 
full of amusing eccentricities, and always a most gay 
and charming companion. Every evening Muggeree 
Bowyer, our little native cabin boy, was called aft, 
made to sing ‘‘ Shoo, fly, don’t bother me,” given a dose 
of a patent medicine called Kennedy’s White Discovery, 
and after a spanking delivered in solemn pretence over 
the captain’s knee, sent to bed. It often happened that 
all hands would be lined up for their dose of Ken- 
nedy’s Discovery or Mother Siegel’s Syrup, and each 
man made to answer a question from the captain to 
prove that he had really disposed of the drug in a 
natural manner, and was not holding it in his mouth 
with the purpose of ejecting it when he got on deck. 

Once the captain, fired, doubtless, by the pervading 
literary atmosphere, announced the fact that he was 
about to write a novel himself. Evening after evening 
he had his chapter ready to read aloud. If it pleased 
us he was delighted. If we laughed at it, as sometimes 
happened in spite of ourselves, he laughed with us. I 
never knew any one, except, perhaps, ‘Tommy Had- 
den,” who was so disarming. While entirely devoted 
to us, we noted that his employers’ interests always 
came first in any conflict of plans. As my husband 
meant he should be captain of the Northern Light, we 


XX1 


PREFACE 


watched him rather closely; and from the employer’s 
point of view he stood the test triumphantly. As to 
his seamanship, there was no question of that; he had, 
as we knew, carried the little Hquator safely through 
the great hurricane of March 16, 1889, arriving in Apia 
with his flag flying, without the loss of spar or sail—the 
only ship afloat except H. M. 8. Calliope, within a radius 
of two hundred miles. 

It is hard for me to believe that I could last have 
heard of Denny Reid as lying in prison in Levuka, con- 
victed of the fraudulent sale of a vessel. Out of the 
ship’s company that sailed with us from Honolulu, the 
captain, as I have said, is a convict of Fiji. The mate, 
Anderson, a silent man with a cleft palate, known as 
the Sou’wegian, in contradistinction to Norwegian—he 
being a Swede—and several of the crew, including little 
Muggeree Bowyer, died of influenza on the return 
voyage to San Francisco; and about the same time La, 
a handsome young native sailor, was swept overboard 
and lost in a squall. I only know of one of the crew 
who escaped disaster, Sir Charles Self, a colonial lad 
who was studying navigation under Captain Reid. Sir 
Charles was not the proud bearer of an hereditary title, 
but was actually christened by that absurd name. 

Just after our arrival in Butaritari, the king, a be- 
sotted, dull, obese man, lifted the taboo from strong 
drink, and the entire population went on a prolonged 
debauch. Those of the natives who had money thronged 
the bars of the two saloons, the “ Sans Souci” and “ The 
Land We Live In”; while the rest contented themselves 
with the fiery spirit made from the sap of the cocoanut 
blossom. This beverage, called sour toddy by the trad- 
ers, causes the person intoxicated with it to “ see ‘ red,’ ” 
Scenes of atrocious barbarity were common, and our 
own safety seemed doubtful. We had rented a little 
wooden house from an Hawaiian missionary, Maka, 


and kept Ah Fu on shore with us to cook, thinking — 


Butaritari a nice, quiet place for literary work. As 


XXIl 


Maka’s cottage was next door to the “ Sans Souci,” a 


, 


| 
| 


BY MRS. R. L. STEVENSON 


hopes in this direction were hardly realised. Mr. Rick, 
Mr. Crawford’s agent in Butaritari, finally closed the 
doors of the “ Sans Souci ’”’; but that only made matters 
worse, so far as noise was concerned, as a crowd gathered 


round the place, fighting and clamouring for drink. 


Little work- was done during our six weeks’ stay in 
Butaritari; but my husband took the occasion to study 
thoroughly the methods of the South Sea traders, of 
whom there were several on the island. It slowly be- 
came evident to him that if he wished to make a success 
of the Northern Light, and earn any kind of interest 
on his investment, he must necessarily do many things 
contrary to the dictates of his conscience. South Sea 
trading could not bear close examination. Without be- 
ing actually dishonest, it came a little too close to the 
line to please us. Our fine scheme began to fade away, 
and by the time we had made the tour of the group it 
was practically abandoned; though my husband, now 
interested in The Wrecker, still meant to write the novel. 
We had talked and thought so much of Samoa, how- 
ever, that it came to seem the natural termination of 
our cruise. My husband concluded to stop at one more 
island, and then charter the Equator for Samoa. So 
little had been accomplished in the way of work in 
Butaritari, that he proposed that we should be left in 
Apemama while the Hquator made her final trip through 
the group. 

Captain Reid expected to be gone about three weeks; 
but squalls and adverse winds drove him out of his 
course, so that more than six weeks had passed before 
his return, bringing us well into the hurricane season. 
Meanwhile, Tembinoka, absolute monarch of the three 


- islands, Apemama, Kurai, and Araukai, had four houses 


iad 


é 
4 


moved from another part of the island to be set up. 
for our use near some brackish water that filtered 
through the coral of the beach into a turbid pool rising 
and falling with the tides. Every evening an old man 
we called Uncle Barker, because his speech was like the 
barking of a dog, brought us green cocoanuts fresh from 


XXIll 


PREFACE 


the trees for our drinking, so we need use the pool only 
for washing and bathing. Besides Uncle Barker, several 
slaves were given us, including three buxom young dam- 
sels who spent the most of their time frolicking in the 
pool. Our premises were enclosed within a taboo line - 
which it was death for any native commoner, not con- 
nected with our family, to cross. 

Here we lived in peace of mind for more than three 
weeks. At last a real beginning of The Wrecker was 
made, and several poems and many letters were writ- 
ten besides. Our houses were charming little basket- 
work affairs, something like bird cages, standing on 
stilts about four feet above the ground, with hanging 
lids for doors and windows; they were clean, airy, and 
quite large enough for our needs. Ah Fu, whom we had 
with us, as usual, baked bread and cakes and pies, and 
roasted the wild chickens he shot with the king’s gun, 
all in one Dutch oven. A Dutch oven is nothing more 
than a shallow iron pot with a flat cover on which live 
coals may be piled. The king proved one of the most 
interesting men we had ever met, and exerted himself 
as he had probably never done in his life before to 
entertain his unexpected guests. 

Week after week slipped by with no sign of the return 
of the Equator. To add to our anxiety our provisions 
began to run short, and a continued diet of wild chickens 
grew to be more distasteful than one would imagine. At 
the end of the fifth week the king’s fishers caught sev- 
eral large turtles of the hawk-bill species, the kind 
whose shells are used commercially. Never was anything 
more welcome than the fresh turtle steaks that were sent 
up to us from the palace. Luckily, just as we had 
finished the turtles, the H. L. Tiernan, Captain Sachs, 
came in, and we were able to buy a couple of kegs of 
mess beef and some other small stores. 

By this time we had about given up the Equator as 
lost, and my husband very nearly took passage on the 
Tiernan for Samoa. But the price asked seemed ex- 
orbitant; besides, the Equator might still be afloat, 


XX1V 


BY MRS. R. L. STEVENSON 


and we could not consider with equanimity Captain 
Reid’s disappointment should he return and find us 
gone. Shortly after her departure from Apemama the 
Tiernan, lying becalmed with all hands asleep, was 
struck by a sudden squall and “ turned turtle,” losing 
sixteen lives. The mate, Edwin Lauterbach, swam to 
an overturned boat, righted it, and together with seven- 
teen survivors, made shift, with a mat held up by hand 
for a sail and thwarts for oars, to reach land after sev- 
eral days of extreme hardship. 

Our anxiety concerning the fate of the Equator was 
now becoming intense. We spent days scanning the 
seas through our glasses, while the king, with his “ dog- 
stars”’ (doctors) made a form of divination that we 
were not allowed to see. When six weeks had gone by, 
and we had lost hope, a sail appeared on the horizon; 
the ship drew nearer and cast anchor—the Equator at 
last! That night we sent off fireworks in honour of the 
captain’s safe arrival, rather to Tembinoka’s alarm, as 
he had many kegs of powder stored in some little 
wooden houses within the palace compound where we 
made our festivities. 

We said farewell to the king with tears. ‘“ I think,” 
said he, with pathetic dignity, ‘ you never saw a king 
ery before.”” —Tembinoka, in his realm of cocoanut and 
coral, had gradually pieced together for himself some 
conception of the universe. He called white men his 
“ books ”’; was anxious in inquiring into the mainsprings 
of human action; was a philosopher, a cynic, and a poet. 
From his little corner he had learned to know the world, 
both its good side and its bad, and his strong, shrewd 
mind was insatiable for facts and prone to the right 
deductions. “I once kept a missionary here a year,” 
he said, in his strange, hesitating uncouth English that 
I make no attempt to render. “I had him teach all he 
knew, and then sent him off with a handsome present. 
Every white man has something to teach me; but when 
I have learned it—here’s your present, my friend, and 
good-bye!” I am glad to say we were not included in 


XXV 


PREFACE 


this category of speeded guests. The king’s regard for us 
was genuine, and his affection and kindness unbounded. 

A succession of storms followed us to Samoa, where we 
arrived in the early part of December, having lost our 
fore-topmast and stay-sail in a squall that nearly sent 
us to the bottom. Had the Equator not carried a cargo 
of some fifty tons of copra, which served to steady her, 
nothing could have saved us. Further chapters of The 
Wrecker were written in Apia in the house of Mr. 
Harry Moors, the trader, mostly on his verandah within 
a few steps of the sea. It was then carried to Sydney, 
where my husband made the acquaintance of “Tommy 
Hadden” (Jack Buckland). Poor Jack, several years 
ago, was robbed by an executor of the estate of the 
little fortune left him by his grandfather, and in his 
despair committed suicide. I often think of Jack’s last 
visit to Vailima, where he arrived accompanied by in- 
numerable ‘‘ kautops ” (retainers; I give Jack’s pronun- 
ciation of the native word) and laden with the strangest 
presents for the family. For my husband he brought a 
very expensive white felt hat, ‘ the latest novelty, just 
out from London”; to my daughter he gave the skull 
of an immense shark, with a photograph of himself 
which he proposed to have framed in blue velvet and set 
between the jaws. There was an anvil for my son, and 
for me four little silver saucepans, an enormous, seam- 
less steel frying-pan, and a brick of mushroom spawn. 

Jack, whose vanity was charmingly innocent, was in 
the habit of continually presenting his photographs to 
every one he knew. When Lauterbach, mate of the 
H. L. Tiernan, took stock of the articles he had suc- 
ceeded in saving after the ship sank, he had one case 
of wine, the ship’s pig, an old mat, and Jack Buckland’s 
photograph. 

From Sydney the much-travelled manuscript re- 
turned to Samoa, where my husband had bought the — 
lands of Vailima, and built his “ big, beautiful, windy _ 
house.” Here The Wrecker, after its many adventures, 
was finally completed in the autumn of the year 1891. 


XXV1 





CONTENTS 


PROLOGUE 


In the Marquesas 


THE YARN 
CHAPTER 
I. A Sound Commercial Education 


II. Roussillon Wine 
III. To Introduce Mr. Pinkerton 
IV. In Which I Experience Extremes of Fortune 
V. In Which J Am Down on My Luck in Paris 
VI. In Which I Go West 
VII. Irons in the Fire: “Opes Strepitumque”’ 
VIII. Faces on the City Front 
IX. The Wreck of the “Flying Scud” 
X. In Which the Crew Vanish 
XI. In Which Jim and I Take Different Ways 
XII. The “Norah Creina” 
XIII. The Island and the Wreck 
XIV. The Cabin of the “Flying Scud” 
XV. The Cargo of the “Flying Scud” 


XVI. In Which I Turn Smuggler, and the Captain 
Casuist 


XVII. Light from the Man of War 


XXV1l 


PAGE 


121 
134 
149 
174 
189 
205 
217 
231 


245 
259 


CHAPTER 


XVIII. 
LX 
».0.¢ 
XXI. 
XXII. 
XXITI. 
POXTYV. 
XXYV. 


CONTENTS 


Cross-Questions and Crooked Answers , 


Travels with a Shyster 
Stallbridge-le-Carthew 

Face to Face 

The Remittance Man 

The Budget of the “Currency Lass” 
A Hard Bargain 

A Bad Bargain 


EPILOGUE 


To Will H. Low 


XXVI1il 


PAGE 


273 
289 
311 
324 
332 
357 
382 
396 


418 





> ~ 
wel pce bs beer 

Fit thirty Saw A" , 
Gel oer A Aer LF oh ane 
.e P % 

eS i I ij " : : i les 














i ayes hoes soi sax iY par 
. (Straits?) h poi ORES BiG dice 

7) eacl sie ‘> VIRlatA oererts od oye 

r trolls is argh } Miao, ourabin¥ 
seers: itech saw einlgeds: ja 
. RD. poles Ay CFs hey 4 Sie YPM sei i¢ eette} 
3 iff Giaianssins Hes IH is A .OT-SVRE me 
it nogy todas MALIOD BAW tysabboie corr 
aipip.) ert nny Ls 73h.4 BE 40 iat) fod PF 
wma gikt me type da Ww PPIOGes >) DERFon 
B< tT ti , b ae Batt 


mil ia uty meg st ar 
Bitlis bibisk tates n Fig: 
toe jokes ati! shat , 
Ba AL M4: Berit } ea et | 
poy selanisncag.ai ny rst 191 
wee Aismenos 0 regu entice 


KEEN 


ppetstais cate a) 3} 


i ‘ an) 
‘ 
oL 4 
‘ 
P 
4 akg 
as > 
’ 
4 
« f 
2 . 
te" y 
A ets - 


¢ 4% 7 
ay Se p 
wavadth 


or} een 
on 





The Wrecker was originally issued serially in Scrib- 
ner’s Magazine, August 1891 to July 1892, and pub- 
lished in book form in 1892. It was one of the South 
Sea Yarns which Stevenson planned in collaboration 
with his stepson, Lloyd Osbourne. The plot developed 
from the strange history of the loss of the brigantine, 
Wandering Minstrel. Graham Balfour notes that the 
first chapters were drawn from Stevenson’s recollec- 
tions of the days he spent in France, especially in Paris 
in 1873-76. A Californian friendship made with Charles 
Warren Stoddard was commented upon in the chapter, 
“Faces on the City Front.” The Californian and sub- 
sequent chapters were cast in the rough by Lloyd Os- 
bourne and revised by Stevenson. The character of 
Nares was drawn from Captain Otis, the commander 
of the Casco. Another South Sea acquaintance, John 
Buckland, generally known as {‘Tin Jack” was the 
prototype of Tommy Hadden. 

To Sidney Colvin, Stevenson wrote on completion of 
the story, “I honestly think it is a good yarn on the 
whole. The part that is genuinely good is Nares, the 
American sailor; that is a genuine figure; had there 
been more Nares it would have been a better book; but, 
of course, it didn’t set up to be a book, only a long tough 
yarn with some pictures of the manners of today in the 
greater world, not the shoddy sham world of cities, 
clubs, and colleges, but the world where men still live 
a man’s life.” 


THE WRECKER 


PROLOGUE 


IN THE MARQUESAS 


T was about three o’clock of a winter’s afternoon in 

Tai-o-hae, the French capital and port of entry of 
the Marquesas Islands. The trades blew strong and 
squally; the surf roared loud on the shingle beach: and 
the fifty-ton schooner of war, that carries the flag 
and influence of France about the islands of the canni- 
bal group, rolled at her moorings under Prison Hill. 
The clouds hung low and black on the surrounding 
amphitheatre of mountains; rain had fallen earlier in 
the day, real tropic rain, a water-spout for violence; 
and the green and gloomy brow of the mountain was 
still seamed with many silver threads of torrent. 

In these hot and healthy islands winter is but a 
name. The rain had not refreshed, nor could the wind 
invigorate, the dwellers of Tai-o-hae: away at one 
end, indeed, the commandant was directing some 
changes in the residency garden beyond Prison Hill; 
and the gardeners, being all convicts, had no choice 
but to continue to obey. All other folks slumbered 
and took their rest: Vaekehu, the native queen, in her 
trim house under the rustling palms; the Tahitian 
commissary, in his beflagged official residence; the 
merchants, in their deserted stores; and even the club- 
servant in the club, his head fallen forward on the 
3 


4 THE WRECKER 


bottle-counter, under the map of the world and the 
cards of navy officers. In the whole length of the single 
shoreside street, with its scattered board houses looking 
to the sea, its grateful shade of palms and green jungle 
of puraos, no moving figure could be seen. Only, at 
the end of the rickety pier, that once (in the vrosperous 
days of the American rebellion) was used to groan 
under the cotton of John Hart, there might have been 
spied upon a pile of lumber the famous tattooed white 
man, the living curiosity of Tai-o-hae. 

His eyes were open, staring down the bay. He saw 
the mountains droop, as they approached the entrance, 
and break down in cliffs; the surf boil white round the 
two sentinel islets; and between, on the narrow bight 
of blue horizon, Ua-pu upraise the ghost of her pin- 
nacled moyntain tops. But his mind would take no 
account of these familiar features; as he dodged in and 
out along the frontier line of sleep and waking, memory 
would serve him with broken fragments of the past: 
brown faces and white, of skipper and shipmate, king 
and chief, would arise before his mind and vanish; he 
would recall old voyages, old landfalls in the hour of 
dawn; he would hear again the drums beat for a man- 
eating festival; perhaps he would summon up the form 
of that island princess for the love of whom he had 
submitted his body to the cruel hands of the tattooer, 
and now sat on the lumber, at the pier-end of Tai-o- 
hae, so strange a figure of a European. Or perhaps 
from yet further back, sounds and scents of England 
and his childhood might assail him; the merry clamour 
of cathedral bells, the broom upon the foreland, the 
song of the river on the weir. 

It is bold water at the mouth of the bay; you can 
steer a ship about either sentinel, close enough to toss 
a biscuit on the rocks. Thus it chanced that, as the 
tattooed man sat dozing and dreaming, he was startled 
into wakefulness and animation by the appearance of 
a flying jib beyond the western islet. Two more head- 
sails followed; and before the tattooed man had 


IN THE MARQUESAS 5 


scrambled to his feet, a topsail schooner of some hun- 
dred tons, had luffed about the sentinel and was stand- 
ing up the bay, close-hauled. 

The sleeping city awakened by enchantment. 
Natives appeared upon all sides, hailing each other 
with the magic ery “Ehippy’—ship; the Queen stepped 
forth on her verandah, shading her eyes under a hand 
that was a miracle of the fine art of tattooing; the 
commandant broke from his domestic convicts and ran 
into the residency for his glass; the harbour master, 
who was also the gaoler, came speeding down the Prison 
Hill; the seventeen brown Kanakas and the French 
boatswain’s mate, that make up the complement of the 
war-schooner, crowded on the forward deck; and the 
various English, Americans, Germans, Poles, Corsicans, 
and Scots—the merchants and the clerks of Tai-o-hae— 
deserted their places of business, and gathered, accord- 
ing to invariable custom, on the road before the club. 

So quickly did these dozen whites collect, so short 
are the distances in Tai-o-hae, that they were already 
exchanging guesses as to the nationality and business 
of the strange vessel, before she had gone about upon 
her second board towards the anchorage. A moment 
after, English colours were broken out at the main 
truck. 

“T told you she was a Johnny Bull—knew it by her 
headsails,” said an evergreen old salt, still qualified (f 
he could anywhere have found an owner unacquainted 
with his story) to adorn another quarter-deck and lose 
another ship. 

“She has American lines, anyway,” said the astute 
Scots engineer of the gin-mill; “it’s my belief she’s a 
yacht.” 

“That’s it,” said the old salt, “a yacht! look at her 
davits, and the boat over the stern.” 

“A yacht in your eye!” said a Glasgow voice. ‘Took 
at her red ensign! A yacht! not much she isn’t!” 

“You can close the store, anyway, Tom,” observed a 
gentlemanly German. “Bon jour, mon Prince!” he 


7 


6 THE WRECKER 


added, as a dark, intelligent native cantered by on a 
neat chestnut. “Vous allez boire une verre de biere?” 

But Prince Stanilas Moanatini, the only reasonably 
busy human creature on the island, was riding hot-spur 
to view this morning’s landslip on the mountain road: 
the sun already visibly declined; night was imminent; 
and if he would avoid the perils of darkness and preci- 
pice, and the fear of the dead, the haunters of the 
jungle, he must for once decline a hospitable invitation. 
Even had he been minded to alight, it presently ap- 
peared there would be difficulty as to the refreshment 
offered. 

“Beer!” cried the Glasgow voice. “No such a thing; 
I tell you there’s only eight bottles in the club! Here’s 
the first time I’ve seen British colours in this port! and 
the man that sails under them has got to drink that 
beer.” 

The proposal struck the public mind as fair, though 
far from cheering; for some time back, indeed, the very 
name of beer had been a sound of sorrow in the club, 
and the evenings had passed in dolorous computation. 

“Here is Havens,” said one as if welcoming a fresh 
topic. ‘What do you think of her, Havens?” 

“T don’t think,” replied Havens, a tall, bland, cool- 
looking, leisurely Englishman, attired in spotless duck, 
and deliberately dealing with a cigarette. “I may say 
I know. She’s consigned to me from Auckland by 
Donald and Edenborough. I am on my way aboard.” 

“What ship is she?” asked the ancient mariner. 

“Haven't an idea,” returned Havens. ‘Some tramp 
they have chartered.” 

With that, he placidly resumed his walk, and was 
soon seated in the stern-sheets of a whale-boat manned 
by uproarious Kanakas, himself daintily perched out 
of the way of the least maculation, giving his com- 
mands in an unobtrusive, dinner-table tone of voice, 
and sweeping neatly enough alongside the schooner, 

A weather-beaten captain received him at the gang- 
way. | 


IN THE MARQUESAS 7 


“You are consigned to us, I think,” said he. “I am 
Mr. Havens.” 

“That is right, sir,” replied the captain, shaking 
hands. “You will find the owner, Mr. Dodd, below. 
Mind the fresh paint on the house.” 

Havens stepped along the alley-way, and descended 
the ladder into the main cabin. 

“Mr. Dodd, I believe,” said he, addressing a smallish, 
bearded gentleman, who sat writing at the table. 
“Why,” he cried, “it isn’t Loudon Dodd?” 

“Myself, my dear fellow,” replied Mr. Dodd, spring- 
ing to his feet with companionable alacrity. “I had a 
half-hope it might be you, when I found your name on 
the papers. Well, there’s ne change in you; still the 
same placid, fresh-looking Britisher.” 

“T can’t return the compliment; for you seem to have 
become a Britisher yourself,” said Havens. 

“T promise you, I am quite unchanged,” returned 
Dodd. “The red tablecloth at the top of the stick is 
not my flag; it’s my partner’s. He is not dead, but 
sleepeth. There he is,” he added, pointing to a bust 
which formed one of the numerous unexpected orna- 
ments of that unusual cabin. 

Havens politely studied it. “A fine bust,” said he; 
“and a very nice-looking fellow.” 

“Yes; he’s a good fellow,” said Dodd. “He runs me 
now. It’s all his money.” 

“He doesn’t seem to be particularly short of it,” 
added the other, peering with growing wonder round 
the cabin. 

“His money, my taste,” said Dodd. ‘The black 
walnut bookshelves are Old English; the books all 
mine,—mostly Renaissance French. You should see 
how the beach-combers wilt away when they go round 
them looking for a change of Seaside Library novels. 
The mirrors are genuine Venice; that’s a good piece in 

_the corner. The daubs are mine—and his; the mudding 
mine.”’ 

“Mudding? What is that?” asked Havens. 


4 
4 » 
fy 


8 THE WRECKER 


“These bronzes,” replied Dodd. “I began life as a 
sculptor.” 

“Yes; I remember something about that,” said the 
other. “I think, too, you said you were interested in 
Californian real estate.” 

“Surely, I never went so far as that,” said Dodd. 
“Interested? I guess not. Involved, perhaps. I was 
born an artist; I never took an interest in anything but 
art. If I were to pile up this old schooner to-morrow,” 
he added, “I declare I believe I would try the thing 
again!” 

“Insured?” inquired Havens. 

“Yes,” responded Dodd. ‘“There’s some fool in 
‘Frisco who insures us, and comes down like a wolf on 
the fold on the profits; but we’ll get even with him 
some day.” 

“Well, I suppose it’s all right about the cargo,” said 
Havens. 

“Oh, I suppose so!” replied Dodd. “Shall we go 
into the papers?” 

“We'll have all to-morrow, you know,” said Havens; 
“and they’ll be rather expecting you at the club. C’est 
Vheure de Vabsinthe. Of course, Loudon, you'll dine 
with me later on.” 

Mr. Dodd signified his acquiescence; drew on his 
white coat, not without a trifling difficulty, for he was a 
man of middle age, and well-to-do; arranged his beard 
and moustaches at one of the Venetian mirrors; and, 
taking a broad felt hat, led the way through the trade- 
room into the ship’s waist. 

The stern boat was waiting alongside,—a boat of an 
elegant model, with cushions and polished hard-wood 
fittings. 

“You steer,” observed Loudon. “You know the best 
place to land.” 

“T never like to steer another man’s boat,” replied | 
Havens. 

“Call it my partner’s, and cry quits,” returned 
Loudon, getting nonchalantly down the side. 


IN THE MARQUESAS 9 


Havens followed and took the yoke-lines without 
further protest. “I am sure I don’t know how you 
make this pay,” he said. “To begin with, she is too big 
for the trade, to my taste; and then you carry so much 
style.” 

“T don’t know that she does pay,” returned Loudon. 
“T never pretend to be a business man. My partner 
appears happy; and the money is all his, as I told you 
—I only bring the want of business habits.” 

“You rather like the berth, I suppose?” suggested 
Havens. 

“Yes,” said Loudon; “it seems odd, but I rather do.” 

While they were yet on board, the sun had dipped; 
the sunset gun (a rifle) cracked from the war-schooner, 
and the colours had been handed down. Dusk was 
deepening as they came ashore; and the Cercle Inter- 
nationale (as the club is officially and significantly 
named) began to shine, from under its low verandahs, 
with the light of many lamps. The good hours of the 
twenty-four drew on; the hateful, poisonous day-fly of 
Nukahiva was beginning to desist from its activity; 
the land-breeze came in refreshing draughts; and the 
club men gathered together for the hour of absinthe. 
To the commandant himself, to the men whom he was 
then contending with at billiards—a trader from the 
next island, honorary member of the club, and once 
carpenter’s mate on board a Yankee war-ship—to the 
doctor of the port, to the Brigadier of Gendarmerie, to 
the opium farmer, and to all the white men whom the 
tide of commerce, or the chances of shipwreck and de- 
_sertion, had stranded on the beach of Tai-o-hae, Mr. 
Loudon Dodd was formally presented; by all (since 
he was a man of pleasing exterior, smooth ways, and 
an unexceptionable flow of talk, whether in French or 
English) he was excellently well received; and 
_presently, with one of the last eight bottles of beer on 
a table at his elbow, found himself the rather silent 
centre-piece of a voluble group on the verandah. 

Talk in the South Seas is all upon one pattern; it is 


~ 


10 THE WRECKER 


a wide ocean, indeed, but a narrow world: you shall 
never talk long and not hear the name of Bully Hayes, 
a naval hero whose exploits and deserved extinction 
left Europe cold; commerce will be touched on, copra, 
shell, perhaps cotton or fungus; but in a far-away 
dilettante fashion, as by men not deeply interested; 
through all, the names of schooners and their captains 
will keep coming and going, thick as May-flies; and 
news of the last shipwreck will be placidly exchanged 
and debated. To a stranger, this conversation will at 
first seem scarcely brilliant; but he will soon catch 
the tone; and by the time he shall have moved a year 
or so in the island world, and come across a good 
number of the schooners, so that every captain’s name 
calls up a figure in pyjamas or white duck, and becomes 
used to a certain laxity of moral tone which prevails 
(as in memory of Mr. Hayes) on smuggling, ship- 
scuttling, barratry, piracy, the labour trade, and other 
kindred fields of human activity, he will find Polynesia 
no less amusing and no less instructive than Pall Mal} 
or Paris. | 

Mr. Loudon Dodd, though he was new to the group 
of the Marquesas, was already an old, salted trader; he 
knew the ships and the captains; he had assisted, in 
other islands, at the first steps of some career of which 
he now heard the culmination, or (vice versa) he had 
brought with him from further south the end of some 
story which had begun in Tai-o-hae. Among other 
matter of interest, like other arrivals in the South 
Seas, he had a wreck to announce. The John T. 
Richards, it appeared, had met the fate of other island 
schooners. | 

“Dickinson piled her up on Palmerston Island,” 
Dodd announced. 

“Who were the owners?” inquired one of the club 
men. 
“O, the usual parties!” returned Loudon,—‘Capsi- 

cum and Co.” 
A smile and a glance of intelligence went round the 


IN THE MARQUESAS 11 


group; and perhaps Loudon gave voice to the general 
sentiment by remarking, “Talk of good business! I 
know nothing better than a schooner, a competent cap- 
tain, and a sound, reliable reef.” 

“Good business! There’s no such a thing!” said the 
Glasgow man. ‘Nobody makes anything but the 
missionaries—dash it!” 

“T den’t know,” said another. “There’s a good deal 
in opium.” 

“It’s a good job to strike a tabooed pearl-island, say, 
about the fourth year,’ remarked a third; “skim the 
whole lagoon on the sly, and up stick and away before 
the French get wind of you.” 

“A pig nokket of cold is good,” observed a German. 

“There’s something in wrecks, too,” said Havens. 
“Look at that man in Honolulu, and the ship that went 
ashore on Waikiki Reef; it was blowing a kona, hard; 
and she began to break up as soon as she touched. 
Lloyd’s agent had her sold inside an hour; and before 
dark, when she went to pieces in earnest, the man that 
bought her had feathered his nest. Three more hours 
of daylight, and he might have retired from business. 
As it was, he built a house on Beretania Street, and 
called it after the ship.” 

“Yes, there’s something in wrecks sometimes,” said 
the Glasgow voice; “but not often.” 

“As a general rule, there’s deuced little in anything,” 
said Havens. 

“Well, I believe that’s a Christian fact,” cried the 
other. “What I want is a secret; get hold of a rich 
man by the right place, and make him squeal.” 

“T suppose you know it’s not thought to be the 
ticket,” returned Havens. 

“T don’t care for that; it’s good enough for me,” 
cried the man from Glasgow, stoutly. ‘The only devil 
of it is, a fellow can never find a secret in a place like 
the South Seas: only in London and Paris.” 

“McGibbon’s been reading some dime-novel, I sup- 
pose,” said one club man. 


12 THE WRECKER 


ie been reading Aurora Floyd,’ remarked an- 
other. 

“And what if I have?” cried MeGibbon. “It’s all 
true. Look at the newspapers! It’s just your con- 
founded ignorance that sets you snickering. I tell you, 
it’s as much a trade as underwriting, and a dashed 
sight more honest.” 

The sudden acrimony of these remarks called 
Loudon (who was a man of peace) from his reserve. 
“Tt’s rather singular,” said: he, “but I seem to have 
practised about all these means of livelihood.” 

“Tit you effer vind a nokket?” inquired the inar- 
ticulate German, eagerly. 

“No. I have been most kinds of fool in my time,” 
returned Loudon, “but not the gold-digging variety. 
Every man has a sane spot somewhere.” 

“Well, then,’ suggested some one, “did you ever 
smuggle opium?” 

“Yes, I did,” said Loudon. 

“Was there money in that?” 

“All the way,” responded Loudon. 

“And perhaps you bought a wreck?” asked another. 

“Yes, sir,” said Loudon. 

“How did that pan out?” pursued the questioner. 

“Well, mine was a peculiar kind of wreck,” replied 
Loudon. “I don’t know, on the whole, that I can 
recommend that branch of industry.” 

“Did she break up?” asked some one. 

“T guess it was rather I that broke down,” says 
Loudon. “Head not big enough.” 

“Ever try the blackmail?” inquired Havens. 

“Simple as you see me sitting here!” responded 
Dodd. 

“Good business?” 

_ “Well, I’m not a lucky man, you see,” returned the 
stranger. ‘It ought to have been good.” 

“You had a secret?” asked the Glasgow man. 

“As big as the State of Texas.” 

“And the other man was rich?” 


a 


IN THE MARQUESAS 13 


“He wasn’t exactly Jay Gould, but I guess he could 
buy these islands if he wanted.” 

__ “Why, what was wrong then? Couldn’t you get 

hands on him?” 

“It took time, but I had him cornered at last; and 
then ? 

“What then?” 

“The speculation turned bottom up. I became the 
man’s bosom friend.” 

“The deuce you did!” 

“He couldn’t have been particular, you mean?” asked 
Dodd, pleasantly. “Well, no; he’s a man of rather 
large sympathies.” 

“If you're done talking nonsense, Loudon,” said 
Havens, “let’s be getting to my place for dinner.” 

Outside, the night was full of the roaring of the surf. 
Scattered lights glowed in the green thicket. Native 
women came by twos and threes out of the darkness, 
smiled and ogled the two whites, perhaps wooed them 
with a strain of laughter, and went by again, bequeath- 
ing to the air a heady perfume of palm-oil and frang- 
ipani blossom. From the club to Mr. Havens’s 
residence was but a step or two, and to any dweller in 
_ Europe they must have seemed steps in fairyland. If 
such an one could but have followed our two friends 
into the wide-verandahed house, sat down with them 
in the cool trellised room, where the wine shone on 
the lamp-lighted tablecloth; tasted of their exotic 
food—raw fish, the breadfruit, the cooked bananas, the 
roast pig served with the inimitable miti, and that king 
of delicacies, palm-tree salad; seen and heard by fits 
and starts, now peering round the corner of the door, 
now railing within against invisible assistants, a certain 
comely young native lady in a sacque, who seemed 
too modest to be a member of the family, and too 
imperious to be less; and then if such an one were 
whisked again through space to Upper Tooting, or 
Wherever else he honoured the domestic gods, “I 
have had a dream,” I think he would say, as he sat up, 





14 THE WRECKER 


rubbing his eyes, in the familiar chimney-corner chair, 
“T have had a dream of a place, and I declare I believe 
it must be heaven.” But to Dodd and his entertainer, 
all this amenity of the tropic night and all these 
dainties of the island table, were grown things of 
custom; and they fell to meat like men who were 
hungry, and drifted into idle talk like men who were a 
trifle bored. 

The scene in the club was referred to. 

“T never heard you talk so much nonsense, Loudon,” 
said the host. 

“Well, it seemed to me there was sulphur in the air, 
so I talked for talking,” returned the other. “But it 
was none of it nonsense.” 

“Do you mean to say it was true?” cried Havens,— 
“that about the opium and the wreck, and the black- 
mailing, and the man who became your friend?” 

“Every last word of it,” said Loudon. 

“You seem to have been seeing life, 
other. 

“Yes, it’s a queer yarn,” said his friend; “if you 
think you would like it, I’ll tell it you.” 

Here follows the yarn of Loudon Dodd, not as he 
told it to his friend, but as he subsequently wrote it. 


” 


returned the 


THE YARN 


CHAPTER I 
A SOUND COMMERCIAL EDUCATION 


HE beginning of this yarn is my poor father’s 

character. There never was a better man, nor a 
handsomer, nor (in my view) a more unhappy—un- 
happy in his business, in his pleasures, in his place of 
residence, and (I am sorry to say it) in his son. He 
had begun life as a land-surveyor, soon became inter- 
ested in real estate, branched off into many other 
speculations, and had the name of one of the smartest 
men in the State of Muskegon. ‘Dodd has a big head,” 
people used to say; but I was never so sure of his 
capacity. His luck, at least, was beyond doubt for 
long; his assiduity, always. He fought in that daily 
battle of money-grubbing, with a kind of sad-eyed 
loyalty like a martyr’s; rose early, ate fast, came home 
dispirited and overweary, even from success; grudged 
himself all pleasure, if his nature was capable of taking 
any, which I sometimes wondered; and laid out, upon 
some deal in wheat or corner in aluminium, the essence 
of which was little better than highway robbery, treas- 
ures of conscientiousness and self-denial. 

Unluckily, I never cared a cent for anything but art, 
and never shall. My idea of man’s chief end was to 
enrich the world with things of beauty and have a 
fairly good time myself while doing so. I do not think 
I mentioned that second part, which is the only one 
I have managed to carry out; but my father must have 
suspected the suppression, for he branded the whole 
affair as self-indulgence. 

15 


16 THE WRECKER 


“Well,” I remember crying once, “and what is your 
life? You are only trying to get money, and to get it 
from other people at that.” 3 

He sighed bitterly (which was very much his habit), 
and shook his poor head at me. “Ah, Loudon, 
Loudon!” said he, “you boys think yourselves very 
smart. But struggle as you please, a man has to work 
in this world. He must be an honest man or a thief, 
Loudon.” 

You can see for yourself how vain it was to argue 
with my father. The despair that seized upon me after 
such an interview was, besides, embittered by remorse; 
for I was at times petulant, but he invariably gentle; 
and I was fighting, after all, for my own liberty and 
pleasure, he singly for what he thought to be my good. 
And all the time he never despaired. “There is good 
stuff in you, Loudon,” he would say; “there is the 
right stuff in you. Blood will tell, and you will come 
right in time. I am not afraid my boy will ever dis- 
grace me; I am only vexed he should sometimes talk 
nonsense.” And then he would pat my shoulder or my 
hand with a kind of motherly way he had, very affect- 
ing in a man so strong and beautiful. 

As soon as I had graduated from the high school, 
he packed me off to the Muskegon Commercial 
Academy. You are a foreigner, and you will have 
a difficulty in accepting the reality of this seat of 
education. I assure you before I begin that I am 
wholly serious. The place really existed, possibly ex- 
ists to-day: we were proud of it in the State, as some- — 
thing exceptionally nineteenth century and civilised; | 
and my father, when he saw me to the cars, no doubt 
considered he was putting me in a straight line for — 
the Presidency and the New Jerusalem. | 

“Loudon,” said he, “I am now giving you a chance | 
that Julius Cesar could not have given to his son—a — 
chance to see life as it is, before your own turn comes . 
to start in earnest. Avoid rash speculation, try to — 
behave like a gentleman; and if you will take my | 


A SOUND COMMERCIAL EDUCATION 17 


advice, confine yourself to a safe, conservative business 
in railroads. Breadstuffs are tempting, but very 
dangerous; | would not try breadstuffs at your time of 
life; but you may feel your way a little in other com- 
modities. Take a pride to keep your books posted, 
and never throw good money after bad. There, my 
‘dear boy, kiss me good-bye; and never forget that you 
are an only chick, and that your dad watches your 
career with fond suspense.” 

The commercial college was a fine, roomy establish- 
ment, pleasantly situated among woods. The air was 
healthy, the food excellent, the premium high. Electric 
wires connected it (to use the words of the prospectus) 
with “the various world centres.” The reading-room 
was well supplied with “commercial organs.” The talk 
was that of Wall Street; and the pupils (from fifty to 
a hundred lads) were principally engaged in rooking 
or trying to rook one another for nominal sums in what 
was called “college paper.” We had class hours, in- 
deed, in the morning, when we studied German, French, 
book-keeping, and the like goodly matters; but the 
bulk of our day and the gist of the education centred 
in the exchange, where we were taught to gamble in 
produce and securities. Since not one of the partici- 
pants possessed a bushel of wheat or a dollar’s worth 
of stock, legitimate business was of course impossible 
from the beginning. It was cold-drawn gambling, 
without colour or disguise. Just that which is the 
impediment and destruction of all genuine commercial 
enterprise, just that we were taught with every luxury 
of stage effect. Our simulacrum of a market was ruled 
by the real markets outside, so that we might experi- 
ence the course and vicissitude of prices. We must 
keep books, and our ledgers were overhauled at the 
month’s end by the principal or his assistants. To add 
a spice of verisimilitude, “college paper” (like poker 
chips) had an actual marketable value. It was bought 
for each pupil by anxious parents and guardians at 
_the rate of one cent for the dollar. The same pupil, 


18 THE WRECKER 


when his education was complete, resold, at the same 
figure, so much as was left him to the college; and even 
in the midst of his curriculum, a successful operator 
would sometimes realise a proportion of his holding, 
and stand a supper on the sly in the neighbouring 
hamlet. In short, if there was ever a worse education, 


it must have been in that academy where Oliver met’ 


Charlie Bates. 

When I was first guided into the exchange to have 
my desk pointed out by one of the assistant teachers I 
was overwhelmed by the clamour and confusion. Cer- 
tain blackboards at the other end of the building 
were covered with figures continually replaced. As 
each new set appeared, the pupils swayed to and fro, 
and roared out aloud with a formidable and to me 
quite meaningless vociferation; leaping at the same 
time upon the desks and benches, signalling with arms 
and heads, and scribbling briskly in note-books. I 
thought I had never beheld a scene more disagreeable; 
and when I considered that the whole traffic was 
illusory, and all the money then upon the market 
would scarce have sufficed to buy a pair of skates, 
I was at first astonished, although not for long. In- 
deed, I had no sooner called to mind how grown-up 
men and women of considerable estate will lose their 
temper about half-penny points, than (making an im- 
mediate allowance for my fellow-students) I trans- 
ferred the whole of my astonishment to the assistant 
teacher, who—poor gentleman—had quite forgot to 
show me to my desk, and stood in the midst of this 
hurly-burly, absorbed and seemingly transported. 

“Look, look,’ he shouted in my ear; “a falling 
market! The bears have had it all their own way 
since yesterday.” 


“It can’t matter,” I replied, making him hear ek : 


difficulty, for I was unused to speak in such a babel, 
“since it is all fun.” 


“True,” said he; “and you must always bear in mind — 


that the real profit is in the book-keeping. I trust, 


4 


: 


A SOUND COMMERCIAL EDUCATION 19 


Dodd, to be able to congratulate you upon your books. 
You are to start with ten thousand dollars of college 
paper, a very liberal figure, which should see you 
through the whole curriculum, if you keep to a safe, 
conservative business. . . . Why, what’s that?” he 
broke off, once more attracted by the changing figures 
on the board. “Seven, four, three! Dodd, you are in 
luck: this is the most spirited rally we have had this 
term. And to think that the same scene is now tran- 
spiring in New York, Chicago, St. Louis, and rival 
business centres! For two cents, I would try a flutter 
with the boys myself,” he cried, rubbing his hands; 
“only it’s against the regulations.” 

“What would you do, sir?” I asked. 

“Do?” he cried, with glittering eyes. “Buy for all I 
was worth!” 

“Would that be a safe, conservative business?” I in- 
quired, as innocent as a lamb. 

He looked daggers at me. “See that sandy-haired 
man in glasses?” he asked, as if to change the subject. 
“That’s Billson, our most popular undergraduate. We 
build confidently on Billson’s future. You could not do 
better, Dodd, than follow Billson.” 

Presently after, in the midst of a still-growing tu- 
mult, the figures coming and going more busily than 
ever on the board, and the hall resounding like Pande- 
monium with the howls of operators, the assistant 
teacher left me to my own resources at my desk. The 
next boy was posting up his ledger, figuring his morn- 
ing’s loss, as I discovered later on; and from this 
ungenial task he was readily diverted by the sight of 
a new face. 

“Say, Freshman,” he said, “what’s your name? 
What? Son of Big Head Dodd? What’s your figure? 
Ten thousand? O, you’re away up! What a soft- 
headed clam you must be to touch your books!” 

I asked him what else I could do, since the books 
were to be examined once a month. 

“Why, you galoot, you get a clerk!” cries he. “One 


20 THE WRECKER 


of our dead beats—that’s all they’re here for. If you’re 
a successful operator, you need never do a stroke of 
work in this old college.” 

The noise had now become deafening; and my new 
friend, telling me that some one had certainly “gone 
down,” that he must know the news, and that he would 
bring me a clerk when he returned, buttoned his coat 
and plunged into the tossing throng. It proved that 
he was right: some one had gone down; a prince had 
fallen in Israel; the corner in lard had proved fatal 
to the mighty; and the clerk who was brought back 
to keep my books, spare me all work, and get all my 
share of the education, at a thousand dollars a month, 
college paper (ten dollars, United States currency), 
was no other than the prominent Billson whom I could 
do no better than follow. The poor lad was very un- 
happy. It’s the only good thing I have to say for 
Muskegon Commercial College, that we were all, even 
the small fry, deeply mortified to be posted as de- 
faulters; and the collapse of a merchant prince like 
Billson, who had ridden pretty high in his days of 
prosperity, was, of course, particularly hard to bear. 
But the spirit of make-believe conquered even the bit- 
terness of recent shame; and my clerk took his orders, 
and fell to his new duties, with decorum and civility. 

Such were my first impressions in this absurd place 
of education; and, to be frank, they were far from 
disagreeable. As long as I was rich, my evenings and 
afternoons would be my own; the clerk must keep my 
books, the clerk could do the jostling and bawling 
in the exchange; and I could turn my mind to land- 
scape-painting and Balzac’s novels, which were then 


my two preoccupations. To remain rich, then, became — 


my problem; or, in other words, to do a safe, con- 


servative line of business. I am looking for that line — 


still; and I believe the nearest thing to it in this im- 


perfect world is the sort of speculation sometimes — 
insidiously proposed to childhood, in the formula, 
“Heads, I win; tails, you lose.” Mindful of my father’s 





A SOUND COMMERCIAL EDUCATION 21 


parting words, I turned my attention timidly to rail- 
roads; and for a month or so maintained a position 
of inglorious security, dealing for small amounts in 
the most inert stocks, and bearing (as best I could) the 
scorn of my hired clerk. One day I had ventured 
a little further by way of experiment; and, in the sure 
expectation they would continue to go down, sold 
several thousand dollars of Pan-Handle Preference (I 
think it was). I had no sooner made this venture, than 
some fools in New York began to bull the market; 
Pan-Handles rose like a balloon; and in the inside of 
half an hour I saw my position compromised. Blood 
will tell, as my father said; and IJ stuck to it gallantly: 
all afternoon I continued selling that infernal stock, all 
afternoon it continued skying. I suppose I had 
come (a frail cockle-shell) athwart the hawse of Jay 
Gould; and, indeed, I think I remember that this 
vagary in the market proved subsequently to be the 
first move in a considerable deal. That evening, at 
least, the name of H. Loudon Dodd held the first rank 
in our collegiate gazette, and I and Billson (once more 
thrown upon the world) were competing for the same 
clerkship. The present object takes the present eye. 
My disaster, for the moment, was the more conspic- 
uous; and it was I that got the situation. So you see, 
even in Muskegon Commercial College, there were les- 
sons to be learned. 

For my part, I cared very little whether I lost or won 
at a game so random, so complex, and so dull; but it 
was sorry news to write wo my poor father, and I em- 
ployed all the resources of my eloquence. I told him 
(what was the truth) that the successful boys had none 
of the education; so that if he wished me to learn, 
he should rejoice at my misfortune. I went on (not 
very consistently) to beg him to set me up again, when 
I would solemnly promise to do a safe business in 
reliable railroads. Lastly (becoming somewhat carried 

away), I assured him I was totally unfit for busi- 
hess, and implored him to take me away from this 


tS 


22 THE WRECKER 


abominable place, and let me go to Paris to study art. 
He answered briefly, gently, and sadly, telling me the 
vacation was near at hand, when we would talk things 
over. 

When the time came, he met me at the depot, and 
I was shocked to see him looking older. He seemed to 
have no thought but to console me and restore (what 
he supposed I had lost) my courage. I must not be 
down-hearted; many of the best men had made a 
failure in the beginning. I told him I had no head for 
business, and his kind face darkened. “You must not 
say that, Loudon,” he replied; “I will never believe 
my son to be a coward.” 

“But I don’t like it,” I pleaded. “It hasn’t got any 
interest for me, and art has. I know I could do more 
in art,” and I reminded him that a successful painter 
gains large sums; that a picture of Meissonier’s would 
sell for many thousand dollars.” 

“And do you think, Loudon,” he replied, “that a man 
who can paint a thousand dollar picture has not grit 
enough to keep his end up in the stock market? No, 
sir, this Mason (of whom you speak) or our own 
American Bierstadt—if you were to put them down in 
a wheat pit to-morrow, they would show their mettle. 
Come, Loudon, my dear; Heaven knows I have no 
thought but your own good, and I will offer you a 
bargain. I start you again next term with ten thou- 
sand dollars; show yourself a man, and double it, and 
then (if you still wish to go to Paris, which I know 
you won't) Ill let you go. But to let you run away 
as if you were whipped, is what I am too proud 
to do.” 

My heart leaped at this proposal, and then sank 
again. It seemed easier to paint a Meissonier on the 
spot than to win ten thousand dollars on that mimic 
stock exchange. Nor could I help reflecting on the © 
singularity of such a test for a man’s capacity to be ag 
painter. I ventured even to comment on this. 

He sighed deeply. “You forget, my dear,” said he, 





A SOUND COMMERCIAL EDUCATION — 23 


“T am a judge of the one, and not of the other. You 
might have the genius of Bierstadt himself, and I 
would be none the wiser.” 

“And then,” I continued, “it’s scarcely fair. The 
other boys are helped by their people, who telegraph 
and give them pointers. There’s Jim Costello, who 
never budges without a word from his father in New 
York. And then, don’t you see, if anybody is to win, 
somebody must lose?” 

“V’ll keep you posted,” cried my father, with unusual 
animation; “I did not know it was allowed. I'll wire 
you in the office cipher, and we’ll make it a kind of 
partnership business, Loudon:—Dodd and Son, eh?” 
and he patted my shoulder and repeated, “Dodd and 
Son, Dodd and Son,” with the kindliest amusement. 

If my father was to give me pointers, and the com- 
mercial college was to be a stepping-stone to Paris, I 
could look my future in the face. The old boy, too, 
was so pleased at the idea of our association in this 
foolery that he immediately plucked up spirit. Thus 
it befell that those who had met at the depot like a 
pair of mutes, sat down to table with holiday faces. 

And now I have to introduce a new character that 
never said a word nor wagged a finger, and yet shaped 
my whole subsequent career. You have crossed the 
States, so that in all likelihood, you have seen the 
head of it, parcel-gilt and curiously fluted, rising 
among trees from a wide plain; for this new character 
was no other than the State capitol of Muskegon, 
then first projected. My father had embraced the 
idea with a mixture of patriotism and commercial 
greed both perfectly genuine. He was of all the 
committees, he had subscribed a great deal of money, 
and he was making arrangements to have a finger 
in most of the contracts. Competitive plans had 
been sent in; at the time of my return from college 
my father was deep in their consideration; and as the 
idea entirely occupied his mind, the first evening did 
not pass away before he had called me into council. 


24 THE WRECKER 


Here was a subject at last into which I could throw 
myself with pleasurable zeal. Architecture was new 
to me, indeed; but it was at least an art; and for all 
the arts I had a taste naturally classical and that 
capacity to take delighted pains which some famous 
idiot has supposed to be synonymous with genius. I 
threw myself headlong into my father’s work, ac- 
quainted myself with all the plans, their merits and 
defects, read besides in special books, made myself a 
master of the theory of strains, studied the current 
prices of materials, and (in one word) “devilled” the 
whole business so thoroughly, that when the plans 
came up for consideration, Big Head Dodd was sup- 
posed to have earned fresh laurels, His arguments 
carried the day, his choice was approved by the com- 
mittee, and I had the anonymous satisfaction to know 
that arguments and choice were wholly mine. In the 
recasting of the plan which followed, my part was even 
larger; for I designed and cast with my own hand a 
hot-air grating for the offices, which had the luck or 
merit to be accepted. The energy and aptitude which 
I displayed throughout delighted and surprised my 
father, and I believe, although I say it whose tongue 
should be tied, that they alone prevented Muskegon 
capitol from being the eyesore of my native State. 
Altogether, I was in a cheery frame of mind when I 
returned to the commercial college; and my earlier 
operations were crowned with a full measure of success. 
My father wrote and wired to me continually. “You 
are to exercise your own judgment, Loudon,” he 
would say. ‘All that I do is to give you the figures; 
but whatever operation you take up must be upon your 
own responsibility and whatever you earn will be en- 
tirely due to your own dash and forethought.” For all 
that, it was always clear what he intended me to do, 
and I was always careful to do it. Inside of a month 
I was at the head of seventeen or eighteen thousand 
dollars, college paper. And here I fella victim to 
one of the vices of the system. The paper (1 have © 





A SOUND COMMERCIAL EDUCATION 25 


already explained) had a real value of one per cent.; 
and cost, and could be sold, for currency. Unsuccessful 
speculators were thus always selling clothes, books, 
banjos, and sleeve-links, in order to pay their differ- 
ences; the successful, on the other hand, were often 
tempted to realise and enjoy some return upon their 
profits. Now I wanted thirty dollars’ worth of artist- 
truck, for I was always sketching in the woods; my al- 
lowance was for the time exhausted; I had begun to 
regard the exchange (with my father’s help) as a place 
where money was to be got for stooping; and in an 
evil hour I realised three thousand dollars of the college 
paper and bought my easel. 

It was a Wednesday morning when the things ar- 
rived, and set me in the seventh heaven of satisfaction. 
My father (for I can scarcely say myself) was trying 
at this time a “straddle” in wheat between Chicago and 
New York; the operation so called is, as you know, one 
of the most tempting and least safe upon the chess- 
board of finance. On the Thursday, luck began to turn 
against my father’s calculations; and by the Friday 
evening, I was posted on the boards as a defaulter for 
the second time. Here was a rude blow: my father 
would have taken it ill enough in any case; for how- 
ever much a man may resent the incapacity of an only 
son, he will feel his own more sensibly. But it chanced 
that in our bitter cup of failure there was one ingre- 
dient that might truly be called poisonous. He had 
been keeping the run of my position; he missed the 
three thousand dollars, paper; and in his view, I had 
stolen thirty dollars, currency. It was an extreme view 
perhaps; but in some senses, it was just; and my father, 
although (to my judgment) quite reckless of honesty in 
the essence of his operations, was the soul of honour as 
to their details. I had one grieved letter from him, 
dignified and tender; and during the rest of that 
wretched term, working as a clerk, selling my clothes 
and sketches to make futile speculations, my dream of 
Paris quite vanished, I was cheered by no word of 


26 THE WRECKER 


kindness and helped by no hint of counsel from my 
father. 

All the time he was no doubt thinking of little else 
but his son, and what to do with him. I believe he had 
been really appalled by what he regarded as my laxity 
of principle and began to think it might be well to pre- 
serve me from temptation; the architect of the capitol 
had, besides, spoken obligingly of my design; and while 
he was thus hanging between two minds, Fortune sud- 
denly stepped in, and Muskegon State capitol reversed 
my destiny. 

“Loudon,” said my father, as he met me at the depot, 
with a smiling countenance, “if you were to go to Paris, 
how long would it take you to become an experienced 
sculptor?” 

“How do you mean, father?” I cried. ‘“Experi- 
enced?” 

“A man that could be entrusted with the highest 
styles,” he answered: “the nude, for instance; and the 
patriotic and emblematical styles.” 

“It might take three years,” I replied. 

“You think Paris necessary?” he asked. “There are 
great advantages in our own country; and that man 
Prodgers appears to be a very clever sculptor, though I - 
suppose he stands too high to go around giving lessons.” » 

“Paris is the only place,” I assured him. | 

“Well, I think myself, it will sound better,” he ad- . 
mitted. “A Young Man, a Native of this State, Son of 
a Leading Citizen, Studies Prosecuted under the most 
Experienced Masters in Paris,” he added, relishingly. — 

“But, my dear dad, what is it all about?” I inter-— 
rurted. “I mever even dreamed of being a sculptor.” 

“Well, here it is,” said he. “I took up the statuary 
contract on our new capitol; I took it up at first as a 
deal; and then it occurred to me it would be better to 
keep it in the family. It meets your idea; there’s con- 
siderable money in the thing; and it’s patriotic. So, if 
you say the word, you shall go to Paris, and come 
back in three years to decorate the capitol of your 


oe 









A SOUND COMMERCIAL EDUCATION (27 


native State. It’s a big change for you, Loudon; and 
Vl tell you what—every dollar you earn, I’ll put an- 
other alongside of it. But the sooner you go, and the 
harder you work, the better; for if the first half-dozen 
statues aren’t on a line with public taste in Muskegon, 
there will be trouble.” 


CHAPTER II 
ROUSSILLON WINE 


Y mother’s family was Scottish, and it was judged 
fitting I should pay a visit on my way Paris- 
ward to my Uncle Adam Loudon, a wealthy retired 
grocer of Edinburgh. He was very stiff and very iron- 
ical; he fed me well, lodged me sumptuously, and 
seemed to take it out of me all the time, cent. per cent., 
in secret entertainment which caused his spectacles to 
glitter and his mouth to twitch. The ground of this 
ill-suppressed mirth (as well as I could make out) 
was simply the fact that I was an American. “Well,” 
he would say, drawing out the word to infinity, “and 
I suppose now in your country things will be so and 
so.” And the whole group of my cousins would titter 
joyously. Repeated receptions of this sort must be at 
the root, I suppose, of what they call the Great Ameri- 
can Jest; and I know I was myself goaded into saying 
that my friends went naked in the summer months, and 
that the Second Methodist Episcopal Church in Mus- 
kegon was decorated with scalps. I cannot say that 
these flights had any great success; they seemed to 
awaken little more surprise than the fact that my 
father was a Republican or that I had been taught in 
school to spell colour without the u. If I had told 
them (what was after all the truth) that my father 
had paid a considerable annual sum to have me brought 
up in a gambling-hell, the tittering and grinning of this 
dreadful family might perhaps have been excused. 

I cannot deny but I was sometimes tempted to 
knock my Uncle Adam down; and indeed I believe it 
must have come to a rupture at last, if they had not 
given a dinner-party at which I was the lion. On this 

28 ; 


ROUSSILLON WINE 29 | 


occasion, I learned (to my surprise and relief) that the 
incivility to which I had been subjected was a matter 
for the family circle and might be regarded almost in 
the light of an endearment. To strangers, I was pre- 
sented with consideration; and the account given of 
“my American brother-in-law, poor Janie’s man, James 
K. Dodd, the well-known millionaire of Muskegon,” 
was calculated to enlarge the heart of a proud son. 

An aged assistant of my grandfather’s, a pleasant, 
humble creature with a taste for whisky, was at first 
deputed to be my guide about the city. With this 
harmless but hardly aristocratic companion, I went to 
Arthur’s Seat and the Calton Hill, heard the band 
play in the Princes Street Gardens, inspected the re- 
galia and the blood of Rizzio, and fell in love with the 
_ great castle on its cliff, the innumerable spires of 
_ churches, the stately buildings, the broad prospects, 
and those narrow and crowded lanes of the old town 
where my ancestors had lived and died in the days 
before Columbus. 

But there was another curiosity that interested me 
more deeply—my grandfather, Alexander Loudon. In 
his time, the old gentleman had been a working mason, 
and had risen from the ranks more, I think, by shrewd- 
ness than by merit. In his appearance, speech, and 
manners, he bore broad marks of his origin, which 
were gall and wormwood to my Uncle Adam. His nails, 
in spite of anxious supervision, were often in con- 
spicuous mourning; his clothes hung about him in bags 
and wrinkles like a ploughman’s Sunday coat; his ac- 
cent was rude, broad, and dragging: take him at his 
best, and even when he could be induced to hold his 
tongue, his mere presence in a corner of the drawing- 
room, with his open-air wrinkles, his scanty hair, his 
battered hands, and the cheerful craftiness of his ex- 
pression, advertised the whole gang of us for a self- 
made family. My aunt might mince and my cousins 
bridle; but there was no getting over the solid physical 
fact of the stonemason in the chimney-corner. 


30 THE WRECKER 


That is one advantage of being an American: it 
never occurred to me to be ashamed of my grandfather, 
and the old gentleman was quick to mark the differ- 
ence. He held my mother in tender memory, perhaps 
because he was in the habit of daily contrasting her 
with Uncle Adam, whom he detested to the point of 
frenzy; and he set down to inheritance from his fa- 
vourite my own becoming treatment. of himself. On 
our walks abroad, which soon became daily, he would 
sometimes (after duly warning me to keep the matter 
dark from ‘‘Aadam’’) skulk into some old familiar pot- 
house; and there (if he had the luck to encounter any 
of his veteran cronies) he would present me to the 
company with manifest pride, casting at the same time 
a covert slur on the rest of his descendants. ‘This is 
my Jeannie’s yin,” he would say. “He’s a fine fallow, 
him.” The purpose of our excursions was not to seek 
antiquities or to enjoy famous prospects, but to visit 
one after another a series of doleful suburbs, for which 
it was the old gentleman’s chief claim to renown that 
he had been the sole contractor, and too often the 
architect besides. I have rarely seen a more shocking 
exhibition: the bricks seemed to be blushing in the 
walls, and the slates on the roof to have turned pale 
with shame; but I was careful not to communicate 
these impressions to the aged artificer at my side; and 
when he would direct my attention to some fresh mon- 
strosity—perhaps with the comment, ““There’s an idee 
of mine’s: it’s cheap and tasty, and had a graand run; 
the idee was soon stole, and there’s whole deestricts 
near Glesgie with the goathic adeetion and that 
plunth,”—I would civilly make haste to admire and 
(what I found particularly delighted him) to inquire 
into the cost of each adornment. It will be conceived 
that Muskegon capitol was a frequent and a welcome 
ground of talk; I drew him all the plans from memory; 
and he, with the aid of a narrow volume full of figures 
and tables, which answered (I believe) to the name of 
Molesworth, and was his constant pocket-companion, 


ROUSSILLON WINE 31 


would draw up rough estimates and make imaginary 
offers on the various contracts. Our Muskegon 
builders he pronounced a pack of cormorants; and the 
congenial subject, together with my knowledge of 
architectural terms, the theory of strains, and the 
prices of materials in the States, formed a strong bond 
of union between what might have been otherwise an 
ill-assorted pair, and led my grandfather to pronounce 
me, with emphasis, “‘a real intalligent kind of a cheild.” 
Thus a second time, as you will presently see, the 
capitol of my native State had influentially affected the 
current of my life. 

I left Edinburgh, however, with not the least idea 
that I had done a stroke of excellent business for my- 
self, and singly delighted to escape out of a somewhat 
dreary house and plunge instead into the rainbow city 
of Paris. Every man has his own romance; mine clus- 
tered exclusively about the practice of the arts, the life 
of Latin Quarter students, and the world of Paris as 
depicted by that grimy wizard, the author of the 
Comédie Humaine. I was not disappointed—I could 
not have been; for I did not see the facts, I brought 
them with me ready-made. Z. Marcas lived next door 
to me in my ungainly, ill-smelling hotel of the Rue 
Racine; I dined at my villainous restaurant with 
Lousteau and with Rastignac: if a curricle nearly ran 
me down at a street-crossing, Maxime de Trailles 
would be the driver. I dined, I say, at a poor restau- 
rant and lived in a poor hotel; and this was not from 
need, but sentiment. My father gave me a profuse 
allowance, and I might have lived (had I chosen) in 
the Quartier de |’Etoile and driven to my studies daily. 
Had I done so, the glamour must have fled: I should 
have still been but Loudon Dodd; whereas now I was 
a Latin Quarter student, Murger’s successor, living in 
flesh and blood the life of one of those romances I had 
loved to read, to re-read, and to dream over, among 
the woods of Muskegon. 

At this time we were all a little Murger “fade in the 


32 THE WRECKER 


Latin Quarter. The play of the Vie de Bohéme (a 
dreary, snivelling piece) had been produced at the 
Odéon, had run an unconscionable time—for Paris, and 
revived the freshness of the legend. The same busi- 
ness, you may say, or there and thereabout, was being 
privately enacted in consequence in every garret of 
the neighbourhood, and a good.third of the students 
were consciously impersonating Rodolphe or Schaunard 
to their own incommunicable satisfaction. Some of us 
went far, and some farther. I always looked with 
awful envy (for instance) on a certain countryman of 
my own, who had a studio in the Rue Monsieur le 
Prince, wore ‘boots, and long hair in a net, and could 
be seen tramping off, in this guise, to the worst eating- 
house of the quarter, followed by -a Corsican model, 
his mistress, in the conspicuous costume of her race 
and calling. It takes some greatness of soul to carry 
even folly to such heights as these; and for my own 
part, I had to content myself by pretending very ardu- 
ously to be poor, by wearing a smoking-cap on the 
streets, and by pursuing, through a series of misad- 
ventures, that extinct mammal, the grisette. The most 
grievous part was the eating and drinking. I was born 
with a dainty tooth and a palate for wine; and only 
a genuine devotion to romance could have supported 
me under the cat-civets that I had to swallow, and the 
red ink of Bercy I must wash them down withal. 
Every now and again, after a hard day at the studio, 
where I was steadily and far from unsuccessfully in- 
dustrious, a wave of distaste would overbear me; I 
would slink away from my haunts and companions. 
indemnify myself for weeks of self-denial with fine 
wines and dainty dishes; seated perhaps on a terrace, 
perhaps in an arbour in a garden, with a volume of 
one of my favourite authors propped open in front of 
me, and now consulted awhile, and now forgotten:— 
so remain, relishing my situation, till night fell and the 
lights of the city kindled; and thence stroll homeward 


ROUSSILLON WINE 33 


by the riverside, under the moon or stars, in a heaven 
of poetry and digestion. 

One such indulgence led me in the course of my 
second year into an adventure which I must relate: 
indeed, it is the very point I have been aiming for, 
since that was what brought me in acquaintance with 
Jim Pinkerton. I sat down alone to dinner one October 
day when the rusty leaves were falling and scuttling on 
the boulevard, and the minds of impressionable men 
- inclined in about an equal degree towards sadness and 
conviviality. The restaurant was no great place, but 
_ boasted a considerable cellar and a long printed list of 
vintages. This I was perusing with the double zest of 
a man who is fond of wine and a lover of beautiful 
names, when my eye fell (near the end of the card) 
on that not very famous or familiar brand, Roussillon. 
I remember it was a wine I had never tasted, ordered 
a bottle, found it excellent, and when I had discussed 
the contents, called (according to my habit) for a final 
pint. It appears they did not keep Roussillon in half- 
bottles. “All right,” said I. “Another bottle.” The 
tables at this eating-house are close together; and the 
next thing I can remember, I was in somewhat loud 
conversation with my nearest neighbours. From these 
I must have gradually extended my attentions; for I 
have a clear recollection of gazing about a room in 
which every chair was half turned round and every 
face turned smilingly to mine. I can even remember 
what I was saying at the moment; but after twenty 
years, the embers of shame are still alive; and I prefer 
to give your imagination the cue, by simply mention- 
ing that my muse was the patriotic. It had been my 
design to adjourn for coffee in the company of some of 
these new friends; but I was no sooner on the sidewalk 
than I found myself unaccountably alone. The cir- 
cumstance scarce surprised me at the time, much less 
now; but I was somewhat chagrined a little after to 
find I had walked into a kiosque. I began to wonder 
if I were any the worse for my last bottle, and decided 


34 THE WRECKER 


to steady myself with coffee and brandy. In the Café 
de la Source, where I went for this restorative, the 
fountain was playing, and (what greatly surprised me) 
the mill and the various mechanical figures on the 
rockery appeared to have been freshly repaired and 
performed the most enchanting antics. The café was 
extraordinarily hot and bright, with every detail of a 
conspicuous clearness, from the faces of the guests to 
the type of the newspapers on the tables, and the whole 
apartment swang to and fro like a hammock, with an 
exhilarating motion. For some while I was so ex- 
tremely pleased with these particulars that I thought I 
could never be weary of beholding them: then dropped 
of a sudden into a causeless sadness; and then, with 
the same swiftness and spontaneity, arrived at the con- 
clusion that I was drunk and had better get to bed. 

It was but a step or two to my hotel, where I got my 
lighted candle from the porter and mounted the four 
flights to my own room. Although I could not deny 
that I was drunk, I was at the same time lucidly 
rational and practical. I had but one preoccupation 
—to be up in time on the morrow for my work; and 
when I observed the clock on my chimney-piece to 
have stopped, I decided to go down-stairs again and 
give directions to the porter. Leaving the eandle burn- 
ing and my door open, to be a guide to me on my 
return, I sct forth accordingly. The house was quite 
dark; but as there were only the three doors on each 
landing, it was impossible to wander, and I had nothing 
to do but descend the stairs until I saw the glimmer 
of the porter’s night light. I counted four flights: no 
porter. It was possible, of course, that I had reckoned 
incorrectly; so I went down another and another, and 
another, still counting as I went, until I had reached 
the preposterous figure of nine flights. It was now 
quite clear that I had somehow passed the porter’s 
lodge without remarking it; indeed, I was, at the 
lowest figure, five pairs of stairs below the street, and 
plunged in the very bowels of the earth. That my 


ROUSSILLON WINE 35 


hotel should thus be founded upon catacombs was a 
discovery of considerable interest; and if I had not 
been in a frame of mind entirely businesslike, I might 
have continued to explore all night this subterranean 
empire. But I was bound I must be up betimes on the 
next morning, and for that end it was imperative that I 
should find the porter. I faced about accordingly, and, 
counting with painful care, remounted towards the 
level of the street. Five, six, and seven flights I 
climbed, and still there was no porter. I began to be 
weary of the job, and, reflecting that I was now close 
to my own room, decided I should go to bed. Eight, 
nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen flights I mounted; 
and my open door seemed to be as wholly lost to me 
as the porter and his floating dip. I remembered that 
the house stood but six stories at its highest point, from 
which it appeared (on the most moderate computation) 
I was now three stories higher than the roof. My 
original sense of amusement was succeeded by a not 
unnatural irritation. “My room has just got to be 
here,” said I, and I stepped towards the door with 
outspread arms. There was no door and no wall; in 
place of either there yawned before me a dark cor- 
ridor, in which I continued to advance for some time 
without encountering the smallest opposition. And this 
in a house whose extreme area scantily contained three 
small rooms, a narrow landing, and the stair! The 
thing was manifestly nonsense; and you will scarcely 
be surprised to learn that I now began to lose my 
temper. At this juncture I perceived a filtering of 
light along the floor, stretched forth my hand which 
encountered the knob of a door-handle, and without 
ceremony entered a room. A young lady was within; 
she was going to bed, and her toilet was far advanced, 
or the other way about, if you prefer. 

“I hope you will pardon this intrusion,” said I; “but 
my room is No. 12, and something has gone wrong 
with this blamed house.” 

She looked at me a moment: and then, “If you will 


36 THE WRECKER 


step outside for a moment, I will take you there,” says 
she. 

Thus, with perfect composure on both sides, the 
matter was arranged. .I waited a while outside her 
door. Presently she rejoined me, in a dressing-gown, 
took my hand, led me up another flight, which made 
the fourth above the level of the roof, and shut me 
into my own room, where (being quite weary after 
these contra-ordinary explorations) I turned in, and 
slumbered like a child. 

I tell you the thing calmly, as it appeared to me to 
pass; but the next day, when I awoke and put memory 
in the witness-box, I could not conceal from myself 
that the tale presented a good many improbable fea- 
tures. I had no mind for the studio, after all, and went 
instead to the Luxembourg gardens, there, among the 
sparrows and the statues and the falling leaves, to cool 
and clear my head. It is a garden I have always loved. 
You sit there in a public place of history and fiction. 
Barras and Fouché have looked from these windows. 
Lousteau and de Banville (one as real as the other) 
have rhymed upon these benches. The city tramples 
by without the railings to a lively measure; and within 
and about you, trees rustle, children and sparrows utter 
their small eries, and the statues look on for ever. 
Here, then, in a seat opposite the gallery entrance, I 
set to work on the events of the last night, to disengage 
(if it were possible) truth from fiction. 

The house, by daylight, had proved to be six stories 
high, the same as ever. I could find, with all my archi- 
tectural experience, no room in its altitude for those in- 
terminable stairways, no width between its walls for 
that long corridor, where I had tramped at night. And 
there was yet a greater difficulty. I had read some- 
where an aphorism that everything may be false to it- 
self save human nature. A house might elongate or 
enlarge itself—or seem to do so to a gentleman who 
had.been dining. The ocean might dry up, the rocks 
melt in the sun, the stars fall from heaven like autumn 


ROUSSILLON WINE 37 


apples; and there was nothing in these incidents to 
boggle the philosopher. But the case of the young lady 
stood upon a different foundation. Girls were not good 
enough, or not good that way, or else they were too 
good. I was ready to accept any of these views: all 
pointed to the same conclusion, which I was thus al- 
ready on the point of reaching, when a fresh argument 
occurred, and instantly confirmed it. I could remem- 
ber the exact words we had each said; and I had 
spoken, and she had replied, in English. Plainly, then, 
the whole affair was an illusion: catacombs, and stairs, 
and charitable lady, all were equally the stuff of 
dreams. 

I had just come to this determination, when there 
blew a flaw of wind through the autumnal gardens; 
the dead leaves showered down, and a flight of spar- 
rows, thick as a snowfall, wheeled above my head with 
sudden pipings. This agreeable bustle was the affair 
of a moment, but it startled me from the abstraction 
into which I had fallen, like a summons. I sat briskly 
up, and as I did so, my eyes rested on the figure of a 
lady in a brown jacket and carrying a paint-box. By 
her side walked a fellow some years older than myself, 
with an easel under his arm; and alike by their course 
and cargo I might judge they were bound for the 
gallery, where the lady was, doubtless, engaged upon 
some copying. You can imagine my surprise when I 
recognised in her the heroine of my adventure. To put 
the matter beyond question, our eyes met, and she, 
seeing herself remembered and recalling the trim in 
which I had last beheld her, looked swiftly on the 
ground with just a shadow of confusion. 

I could not tell you to-day if she were plain or 
pretty; but she had behaved with so much good sense, 
and I had cut so poor a figure in her presence, that I. 
became instantly fired with the desire to display my- 
self in a more favourable light. The young man 
besides was possibly her brother; brothers are apt to 
be hasty, theirs being a part in which it is possible, 


38 THE WRECKER 


at a comparatively early age, to assume the dignity of 
manhood; and it occurred to me it might be wise to 
forestall all possible complications by an apology. 

On this reasoning I drew near to the gallery door, 
and had hardly got in position before the young man 
came out. Thus it was that I came face to face with 
my third destiny; for my career has been entirely 
shaped by these three elements,—my father, the capitol 
of Muskegon, and my friend, Jim Pinkerton. As for 
the young lady with whom my mind was at the mo- 
ment chiefly occupied, I was never to hear more of her 
from that day forward: an excellent example of the 
Blind Man’s Buff that we call life. 


CHAPTER III 
TO INTRODUCE MR. PINKERTON 


HE stranger, I have said, was some years older 

than myself: a man of a good stature, a very 
lively face, cordial, agitated manners, and a grey eye 
as active as a fowl’s. 

“May I have a word with you?” said I. 

“My dear sir,” he replied, “I don’t know what it can 
be about, but you may have a hundred if you like.” 

“You have just left the side of a young lady,” I con- 
cinued, “towards whom I was led (very unintention- 
ally) into the appearance of an offence. To speak to 
herself would be only to renew her embarrassment, and 
I seize the occasion of making my apology, and declar- 
ing my respect, to one of my own sex who is her 
friend, and perhaps,” I added, with a bow, “her natural 
protector.” 

“You are a countryman of mine; I know it!” he 
cried: “I am sure of it by your delicacy toalady. You 
do her no more than justice. I was introduced to her 
the other night at tea, in the apartment of some people, 
friends of mine; and meeting her again this morning, 
{ could not do less than carry her easel for her. My 
dear sir, what is your name?” 

I was disappointed to find he had so little bond with 
my young lady; and but that it was I who had sought 
the acquaintance, might have been tempted to retreat. 
At the same time, something in the stranger’s eye en- 
gaged me. 

“My name,” said I, “is Loudon Dodd; I am a 
student of sculpture here from Muskegon.” 

“O, sculpture?” he cried, as though that would have 

39 


40 * THE WRECKER 


been his last conjecture. ‘Mine is James Pinkerton; 
I am delighted to have the pleasure of your acquaint- 
ance.’ 

“Pinkerton!” it was now my turn to exclaim. “Are 
you Broken-Stool Pinkerton?” 

He admitted his identity with a laugh of boyish de- 
light; and indeed any young man in the quarter might 
have been SiSen to own a sobriquet thus gallantly 
acquired. 

In order to ire ieaie the name, I must here digress 
into a chapter of the history of manners in the nine-— 
teenth century, very well worth commemoration for its — 
own sake. In some of the studios at that date, the 
hazing of new pupils was both barbarous and obscene. 
Two incidents following one on the heels of the other 
tended to produce an advance in civilisation by the 
means (as so commonly happens) of a passing appeal 
to savage standards. The first was the arrival of a 
little gentleman from Armenia. He had a fez upon his 
head and (what nobody counted on) a dagger in his 
pocket. The hazing was set about in the customary 
style, and, perhaps in virtue of the victim’s head-gear, 
even more boisterously than usual. He bore it at first 
with an inviting patience; but upon one of the students 
proceeding to an unpardonable freedom, plucked out 
his knife and suddenly plunged it in the belly of the 
jester. This gentleman, I am pleased to say, passed 
months upon a bed of sickness, before he was in a 
position to resume his studies. The second incident 
was that which had earned Pinkerton his reputation. 
In a crowded studio, while some very filthy brutalities — 
were being practised on a trembling débutante, a tall, 
pale fellow sprang from his stool and (without the: 
smallest preface or explanation) sang out, “All English — 
and Americans to clear the shop!” Our race is brutal, © 
but not filthy; and the summons was nobly responded — 
to. Every Anglo-Saxon student seized his stool; in a_ 
moment the studio was full of bloody coxcombs, the 
French fleeing in disorder for the door, the victim 





SNe 


TO INTRODUCE MR. PINKERTON 41 


liberated and amazed. In this feat of arms, both Eng- 


lish-speaking nations covered themselves with glory; 
but I am proud to claim the author of the whole for an 
American, and a patriotic American at that, being the 
same gentleman who had subsequently to be held down 
in the bottom of a box during a performance of L’Oncle 
Sam, sobbing at intervals, “My country, O my coun- 
try!” while yet another (my new acquaintance, Pinker- 


ton) was supposed to have made the most conspicuous 
figure in the actual battle. At one blow he had broken 


his own stool and sent the largest of his opponents 


back foremost through what we used to call “a con- 
-scientious nude.” It appears that, in the continuation 
of his flight, this fallen warrior issued on the boulevard 


still framed in the burst canvas. 


It will be understood how much talk the incident 


aroused in the student’s quarter, and that I was highly 
gratified to make the acquaintance of my famous 


countryman. It chanced I was to see more of the 
quixotic side of his character before the morning was 
done; for as we continued to stroll together, 1 found 
myself near the studio of a young Frenchman whose 
work I had promised to examine, and in the fashion of 
the quarter carried up Pinkerton along with me. Some 
of my comrades of this date were pretty obnoxious fel- 
lows. I could almost always admire and respect the 
srown-up practitioners of art in Paris; but many of 
those who were still in a state of pupilage were sorry 
specimens, so much so that I used often to wonder 
where the painters came from, and where the brutes 
of students went to. A similar mystery hangs over 
the intermediate stages of the medical profession, and 
must have perplexed the least observant. The ruffian, 
at least, whom I now carried Pinkerton to visit, was 
one of the most crapulous in the quarter. He turned 
out for our delectation a huge “crust” (as we used 
to call it) of St. Stephen, wallowing in red upon his 
belly in an exhausted receiver, and a crowd of Hebrews 
in blue, green, and yellow, pelting him—apparently 


42 THE WRECKER 


with buns; and while we gazed upon this contrivance, 
regaled us with a piece of his own recent biography, 
of which his mind was still very full, and which he 
seemed to fancy represented him in a heroic posture. 
I was one of those cosmopolitan Americans, who accept 
the world (whether at home or abroad) as they find 
it, and whose favourite part is that of the spectator; 
yet even I was listening with ill-suppressed disgust, 
when I was aware of a violent plucking at my sleeve. 

“Ts he saying he kicked her down-stairs?” asked 
Pinkerton, white as St. Stephen. 

“Yes,” said I: “his discarded mistress; and then he 
pelted her with stones. I suppose that’s what gave him 
the idea for his picture. He has just been alleging the 
pathetic excuse that she was old enough to be his 
mother.” 

Something like a sob broke from Pinkerton. ‘Tell 
him,” he gasped—‘“I can’t speak this language, though 
I understand a little; I never had any proper education 
—tell him I’m going to punch his head.” 

“For God’s sake, do nothing of the sort!” I cried. 
“They don’t understand that sort of thing here.” And 
I tried to bundle him out. 

“Tell him first what we think of him,” he objected. 
“Let me tell him what he looks in the eyes of a pure- 
minded American.” 

“Leave that to me,” said I, thrusting Pinkerton clear 
through the door. 

“Qwest-ce qui a?’”* inquired the student. 

“Monsieur se sent mal au ceeur d’avoir trop regardé 
votre croute,”* said I, and made my escape, scarce with 
dignity, at Pinkerton’s heels. 

“What did you say to him?” he asked. 

“The only thing that he could feel,” was my reply. 

After this scene, the freedom with which I had — 
ejected my new acquaintance, and the precipitation 

*“What’s the matter with him?” 


*“Vhe gentleman is sick at his stomach from having looked 
too long at your daub.” 


TO INTRODUCE MR. PINKERTON 43 


with which I had followed him, the least I could do 
was to propose luncheon. I have forgot the name of 
the place to which I led him, nothing loath; it was on 
the far side of the Luxembourg at least, with a garden 
behind, where we were speedily set face to face at table, 
and began to dig into each other’s history and char- 
acter, like terriers after rabbits, according to the ap- 
proved fashion of youth. 

Pinkerton’s parents were from the old country; there 
too, I incidentally gathered, he had himself been born, 
though it was a circumstance he seemed prone to for- 
get. Whether he had run away, or his father had 
turned him out, I never fathomed; but about the age 
of twelve he was thrown upon his own resources. A 
travelling tin-type photographer picked him up, like 
a haw out of a hedgerow, on a wayside in New Jersey; 
took a fancy to the urchin; carried him on with him 
in his wandering life; taught him all he knew himself 
—to make tin-types (as well as I can make out) and 
doubt the Scriptures; and died at last in Ohio at the 
corner of a road. “He was a grand specimen,” cried 
Pinkerton; “I wish you could have seen him, Mr. 
Dodd. He had an appearance of magnanimity that 
used to remind me of the patriarchs.” On the death of 
this random protector, the boy inherited the plant and 
continued the business. “It was a life I could have 
chosen, Mr. Dodd!” he cried. “I have been in all the 
finest scenes of that magnificent continent that we 
were born to be the heirs of. I wish you could see my 
collection of tin-types; I wish I had them here. They 
were taken for my own pleasure and to be a memento; 
and they show Nature in her grandest as well as her 
gentlest moments.” As he tramped the Western States 
and Territories, taking tin-types, the boy was continu- 
ally getting hold of books, good, bad and indifferent, 
popular and abstruse, from the novels of Sylvanus 
- Cobb to Euclid’s Elements, both of which I found (to 
my almost equal wonder) he had managed to peruse: 
he was taking stock by the way, of the people, the 


44 THE WRECKER 


products, and the country, with an eye unusually ob- 
servant and a memory unusually retentive; and he was 
collecting for himself a body of magnanimous and 
semi-intellectual nonsense, which he supposed to be the 
natural thoughts and to eontain the whole duty of the 
born American. To be pure-minded, to be patriotic, to 
get culture and money with both hands and with the 
same irrational fervour—these appeared to be the chief 
articles of his creed. In later days (not of course upon 
this first occasion) I would sometimes ask him why; 
and he had his answer pat. “To build up the type!” 
he would ery. ‘We’re all committed to that; we’re all 
under bond to fulfil the American Type! Loudon, the 
hope of the world is there. If we fail, like these old 
feudal monarchies, what is left?” 

The trade of tin- -typer proved too narrow for the 
lad’s ambition; it was insusceptible of expansion, he 
explained; it was not truly modern; and by a sudden 
conversion of front, he became a railroad-scalper. ‘The 
principles of this trade I never clearly understood; but 
its essence appears to be to cheat the railroads out of 
their due fare. ‘I threw my whole soul into it; I grudged 
myself food and sleep while I was at it; the most prac- 
tised hands admitted I had caught on to the idea in a 
month and revolutionised the practice inside of a year,” 
he said. “And there’s interest in it, too. It’s amusing 


to pick out some one going by, make up your mind © 


about his character and tastes, dash out of the office — 


and hit him flying with an offer of the very place he 


wants to go to. I don’t think there was a scalper on — 


the continent made fewer blunders. But I took it only — 
as a stage. I was saving every dollar; I was looking © 


ahead. I knew what I wanted—wealth, education, a 


refined home, and a conscientious, cultured lady for a — 


wife; for, Mr. Dodd’—this with a formidable outery — 


—“every man is bound to marry above him: if the — 
woman’s not the man’s superior, I brand it as mere 
sensuality. There was my idea, at least. That was 
what I was saving for; and enough, too! But it isn’t 







TO INTRODUCE MR. PINKERTON 45 


every man, I know that—it’s far from every man 
—could do what I did: close up the livest agency in 
St. Jo, where he was coining dollars by the pot, set 
out alone, without a friend or a word of French, and 
settle down here to spend his capital learning art.” 

“Was it an old taste?” I asked him, “or a sudden 
fancy?” 

“Neither, Mr. Dodd,” he admitted. ‘Of course, I 
had learned in my tin-typing excursions to glory and 
exult in the works of God. But it wasn’t that. I just 
said to myself, What is most wanted in my age and 
country? More culture and more art, I said; and I 
chose the best place, saved my money, and came here 
to get them.” 

The whole attitude of this young man warmed and 
shamed me. He had more fire in his little toe than I 
in my whole carcase; he was stuffed to bursting with 
the manly virtues; thrift and courage glowed in him; 
and even if his artistic vocation seemed (to one of 
my exclusive tenets) not quite clear, who could predict 
what might be accomplished by a creature so full- 
blooded and so inspired with animal and intellectual 
energy? So, when he proposed that I should come and 
see his work (one of the regular stages of a Latin 
Sanghi friendship) I followed him with interest and 

ope. 

_ He lodged parsimoniously at the top of a tall house 
near the Observatory, in a bare room, principally fur- 
nished with his own trunks and papered with his own 
despicable studies. No man has less taste for dis- 
agreeable duties than myself; perhaps there is only 
one subject on which I cannot flatter a man without 
a blush; but upon that, upon all that touches art, my 
sincerity is Roman. Once or twice I made a circuit 
of his walls in silence, spying in every corner for some 
spark of merit; he, meanwhile, following close at my 
heels, reading the verdict in my face with furtive 
glances, presenting some fresh study for my inspection . 
with undisguised anxiety, and (after it had beon 


46 THE WRECKER 


silently weighed in the balances and found wanting) 
whisking it away with an open gesture of despair. By 
the time the second round was completed, we were 
both extremely depressed. 

“O!” he groaned, breaking the long silence, “it’s quite 
unnecessary you should speak!” 

“Do you want me to be frank with you? I think 
you are wasting time,” said I. 

“You don’t see any promise?” he inquired, beguiled 
by some return of hope, and turning upon me the em- 
barrassing brightness of his eye. “Not in this still-life 
here, of the melon? One fellow thought it good.” 

It was the least I could do to give the melon a more 
particular examination; which, when I had done, I 
could but shake my head. “I am truly sorry, Pinker- 
ton,” said I, “but I can’t advise you to persevere.” 

He seemed to recover his fortitude at the moment, 
rebounding from disappointment like a man of india- 
rubber. ‘‘Well,” said he, stoutly, “I don’t know that 
I’m surprised. But I’ll go on with the course; and 
throw my whole soul into it, too. You mustn’t think 
the time is lost. It’s all culture; it will help me to 
extend my relations when I get back home; it may 
fit me for a position on one of the illustrateds; and 
then I can always turn dealer,” he said, uttering the 
monstrous proposition, which was enough to shake the 
Latin Quarter to the dust, with entire simplicity. “It’s 
all experience, besides,” he continued, “and it seems — 
to me there’s a tendency to underrate experience, both 
as net profit and investment. Never mind. That’s 
done with. But it took courage for you to say what 
you did, and I'll never forget it. Here’s my hand, Mr. 
Dodd. I’m not your equal in culture or talent——” 

“You know nothing about that,” I interrupted. ‘¢. 
have seen your work, but you haven't seen mine.’ 

“No more I have, ” he cried; ‘‘and let’s go see it at 
i But I know you are away up. I can feel it 
. here 
To say truth, I was almost ashamed to introduce him : 


TO INTRODUCE MR. PINKERTON 47 


to my studio—my work, whether absolutely good or 
bad, being so vastly superior to his. But his spirits 
were now quite restored; and he amazed me, on the 
way, with his light-hearted talk and new projects. So 
that I began at last to understand how matters lay: 
that this was not an artist who had been deprived 
of the practice of his single art; but only a business 
man of very extended interests, informed (perhaps 
something of the most suddenly) that one investment 
out of twenty had gone wrong. 

As a matter of fact, besides (although I never sus- 
pected it), he was already seeking consolation with 
another of the muses, and pleasing himself with the 
notion that he would repay me for my sincerity, | 
cement our friendship, and (at one and the same blow) 
restore my estimation of his talents. Several times. 
already, when I had been speaking of myself, he had- 
pulled out a writing-pad and scribbled a brief note; 
and now, when we entered the studio, I saw it in his 
hand again, and the pencil go to his mouth, as he cast 
a comprehensive glance round the uncomfortable build- 
ing. 

“Are you going to make a sketch of it?” I could not 
help asking, as I unveiled the Genius of Muskegon. 

“Ah, that’s my secret,” said he. “Never you mind. 
A mouse can help a lion.” 

He walked round my statue and had the design ex- 
plained to him. I had represented Muskegon as a 
young, almost a stripling, mother, with something of 
an Indian type; the babe upon her knees was winged, 
to indicate our soaring future; and her seat was a 
medley of sculptured fragments, Greek, Roman, and 
Gothic, to remind us of the older worlds from which 
we trace our generation. 

“Now does this satisfy you, Mr. Dodd?” he inquired, 
as soon as I had explained to him the main features 
of the design. 

“Well,” I said, “the fellows seem to think it’s not a 
bad bonne.femme for a beginner. I don’t think it’s 


48 THE WRECKER 


entirely bad, myself. Here is the best point; it builds 
up best from here. No, it seems to me it has a kind of © 
merit,” I admitted; “but I mean to do better.” 

“Ah, that’s the "word !” cried Pinkerton. ‘“There’s 
the word I love!” and he scribbled in his pad. 

“What in creation ails you?” I inquired. “It’s the 
most commonplace expression in the English lan- 
guage,” 

“Better and better!” chuckled Pinkerton. “The un- 
consciousness of genius. Lord, but this is coming in 
beautiful!” and he scribbled again. 

“Tf you're going to be fulsome,” said I, “I'll close the 
place of entertainment.” And I threatened to replace 
the veil upon the Genius. | | 

“No, no,” said he. “Don’t be in a hurry. Give me ~ 
a point or two. Show me what’s particularly good.” 

“T would rather you found that out for yourself,” 
said I. 

“The trouble is,” said he, “that I’ve never turned my 
attention to sculpture, beyond, of course, admiring it, — 
as everybody must who has a soul. So do just be a — 
good fellow, and explain to me what you lke in it, 
and what you tried for, and where the merit comes in. 
It’ll be all education for me.” 

“Well, in sculpture, you see, the first thing you have — 
to consider is the masses. It’s, after all, a kind of © 
architecture,” I began, and delivered a lecture on that 
branch of art, with illustrations from my own master- — 
piece there present, all of which, if you don’t mind, 
or whether you mind or not, I mean to conscientiously — 
omit. Pinkerton listened with a fiery interest, ques- 
tioned me with a certain uncultivated shrewdness, and 
continued to scratch down notes, and tear fresh sheets — 
from his pad. I found it inspiring to have my words 
thus taken down like a professor’s lecture; and having — 
had no previous experience of the press, I was Unaware — 
that they were all being taken down wrong.» For the — 
same reason (incredible as it must appear in an Ameri- 

can) I never entertained the least suspicion that they — 


es ~~ Te ee he 





TO INTRODUCE MR. PINKERTON 49 


were destined to be dished up with a sauce of penny- 
a-lining gossip; and myself, my person, and my works 
of art butchered to make a holiday for the readers of 
a Sunday paper. Night had fallen over the Genius of 
Muskegon before the issue of my theoretic eloquence 
was stayed, nor did I separate from my new friend 
without an appointment for the morrow. 

I was indeed greatly taken with this first view of my 
countryman, and continued, on further acquaintance, 
_.to be interested, amused, and attracted by him in 
about equal proportions. I must not say he had a 
fault, not only because my mouth is sealed by grati- 
tude, but because those he had sprang merely from his 
education, and you could see he had cultivated and 
improved them like virtues. For all that, I can never 
deny he was a troublous friend to me, and the trouble 
began early. 

It may have been a fortnight later that I divined the 

secret of the writing-pad. My wretch (it leaked out) 
wrote letters for a paper in the West, and had filled 
a part of one of them with descriptions of myself. I 
pointed out to him that he had no right to do so with- 
out asking my permission. 
“Why, this is just what I hoped!” he exclaimed. “I 
thought you didn’t seem to catch on; only it seemed 
too good to be true.” | 
“But, my good fellow, you were bound to warn me,” 
I objected. 

“TI know it’s generally considered etiquette,’ he ad- 
mitted; “but between friends, and when it was only 
with a view of serving you, I thought it wouldn't 
matter. I wanted it (if possible) to come on you as 
a surprise; I wanted you just to waken, like Lord 
Byron, and find the papers full of you. You must 
admit it was a natural thought. And no man likes 
to boast of a favour beforehand.” 

“But heavens and earth! how do you know I think it 
a favour?” I cried. 

He became immediately plunged in despair. “You 


50 THE WRECKER 


think it a liberty,” said he; “I see that. I would rather 
have cut off my hand. I would stop it now, only it’s 
too late; it’s published by now. And I wrote it with 
so much pride and pleasure!” 

I could think of nothing but how to console him. 
“QO, I daresay it’s all right,” said I. “I know you 
meant it kindly, and you would be sure to do it in 
good taste.” 

“That you may swear to,” he cried. “It’s a pure, 
bright, A number 1 paper; the St. Jo Sunday Herald., , 
The idea of the series was quite my own; I interviewed 
the editor, put it to him straight; the freshness of the 
idea took him, and I walked out of that office with the 
contract in my pocket, and did my first Paris letter 
that evening in St. Jo. The editor did no more than 
glance his eye down the headlines, “You're the man 
for us,’ said he.” 

I was certainly far from reassured by this sketch of 
the class of literature in which I was to make my first 
appearance; but I said no more, and possessed my 
soul in patience, until the day came when I received 
a copy of a newspaper marked in the corner, ““Compli- 
ments of J. P.” I opened it with sensible shrinkings; 
and there, wedged between an account of a prize- 
fight and a skittish article upon chiropody—think of 
chiropody treated with a leer!—I came. upon a column 
and a half in which myself and my poor statue were 
embalmed. Like the editor with the first of the series, 
I did but glance my eye down the head-lines and was 
more than satisfied. 


ANOTHER OF PINKERTON’S 
S Pil, CY, : Gee | 
ART PRACTITIONERS IN PARIS. 
MUSKEGON’S COLUMNED CAPITOL. 


SON OF MILLIONAIRE DODD, 
PATRIOT AND ARTIST. 
“On MEANS TO DO BETTER.’ 





TO INTRODUCE MR. PINKERTON 51 


In the body of the text besides, my eye caught, as 
it passed, some deadly expressions: “Figure some- 
what fleshy,” “bright, intellectual smile,” “the uncon- 
sciousness of genius,” “ ‘Now, Mr. Dodd’, resumed the 
reporter, “what would be your idea of a distinctively 
American quality in sculpture?’” It was true the 
question had been asked; it was true, alas! that I had 
answered; and now here was my reply, or some strange 
hash of it, gibbetted in the cold publicity of type. I 
thanked God that my French fellow-students were 
ignorant of English; but when I thought of the British 
—of Myner (for instance) or the Stennises—I think I 
could have fallen on Pinkerton and beat him. 

To divert my thoughts (if it were possible) from this 
calamity, I turned to a letter from my father which 
had arrived by the same post. The envelope contained 
a strip of newspaper-cutting; and my eye caught again, 
“Son of Millionaire Dodd—Figure somewhat fleshy,” 
and the rest of the degrading nonsense. What would 
my father think of it? I wondered, and opened his 
manuscript. “My dearest boy,” it began, “I send you 
a cutting, which has pleased me very much, from a St. 
Joseph paper of high standing. At last you seem to be 
coming fairly to the front; and I cannot but reflect 
with delight and eratitude how very few youths of 
your age occupy nearly two columns of press-matter 
all to themselves. I only wish your dear mother had 
been here to read it over my shoulder; but we will 
hope she shares my grateful emotion in a better place. 
Of course I have sent a copy to your grandfather and 
uncle in Edinburgh; so you can keep the one I enclose. 
This Jim Pinkerton seems a valuable acquaintance; he 
has certainly great talent; and it is a good general rule 
to keep in with pressmen.” 

I hope it will be set down to the right side of my 
account, but I had no sooner read these words, so 
touchingly silly, than my anger against Pinkerton was 
swallowed up in gratitude. Of all the circumstances 
of my career, my birth, perhaps, excepted, not one had 


52 THE WRECKER 


given my poor father so profound a pleasure as this 


and at the cost of only a few blushes, paid back a 
fraction of my debt of gratitude. So that, when I 





| 
article in the Sunday Herald. What a fool, then, was — 
I, to be lamenting! when I had at last, and for once, — 


next met Pinkerton, I took things very lightly; my — 
father was pleased, and thought the letter very clever, — 
I told him; for my own part, I had no taste for pub- — 


licity: thought the public had no concern with the 


artist, only with his art; and though I owned he had — 
handled it with great consideration, I should take it © 


as a favour if he never did it again. 


“There it is,” he said, despondingly. “I’ve hurt — 
you. You can’t deceive me, Loudon. It’s the want of — 
tact, and it’s incurable.” He sat down, and leaned ~ 
his head upon his hand. “I had no advantages when — 


I was young, you see,” he added. 


“Not in the least, my dear fellow,” said I. “Only | 


the next time you wish to do me a service, just speak 


about my work; leave my wretched person out, and — 
my still more wretched conversation; and, above all,” — 
I added, with an irrepressible shudder, “don’t tell them — 


how I said it! There’s that phrase, now: ‘With a 


proud, glad smile.” Who cares whether I smiled or ~ 


not?” 


“OQ, there now, Loudon, you're entirely wrong,” he — 


broke in. “That’s what the public likes; that’s the — 


merit of the thing, the literary value. It’s to call © 


up the scene before them; it’s to enable the humblest 
citizen to enjoy that afternoon the same as I did. 
Think what. it would have been to me when I was 
tramping around with my tin-types to find a\.column 
and a half of real, cultured conversation—an artist, 
in his studio abroad, talking of his art—and to know 
how he looked as he did it, and what the room was 
like, and what he had for breakfast; and to tell my- 


self, eating tinned beans beside a-creek, that if all went — 


well, the same sort of thing would, sooner or later, 








; 


TO INTRODUCE MR. PINKERTON 53 


happen to myself: why, Loudon, it would have been 
like a peep-hole into heaven!” 

“Well, if it gives so much pleasure,” I admitted, “the 

sufferers shouldn't complain, Ply give the other fel- 
lows a turn.” 

The end of the matter was “E bring myself and the 
journalist in a more close relation. If I know anything 
at all of human nature—and the 7f is no mere figure of 
speech, but stands for honest doubt—no series of bene- 
fits conferred, or even dangers shared, would have 
so rapidly confirmed our friendship as this quarrel 
avoided, this fundamental difference of taste and train- 
ing accepted and condoned. 


CHAPTER IV, 
IN WHICH I EXPERIENCE EXTREMES OF FORTUNE 


HETHER it came from my training and re- 
peated bankruptcy at the commercial college, or 
by direct inheritance from old Loudon, the Edinburgh 
mason, there can be no doubt about the fact that I was 
thrifty. Looking myself impartially over, I believe 
that is my only manly virtue. During my first two 
years in Paris I not only made it a point to keep well 
inside of my allowance, but accumulated considerable 
savings in the bank. You will say, with my masquerade 
of living as a penniless student, it must have been easy 
to do so: I should have had no difficulty, however, in 
doing the reverse. Indeed, it is wonderful I did not; 
and early in the third year, or soon after I had known 
Pinkerton, a singular incident proved it to have been 
equally wise. Quarter-day came, and brought no al- 
lowance. A letter of remonstrance- was despatched, 
and for the first time in my experience, remained un- 
answered. A cablegram was more effectual; for it 
brought me at least a promise of attention. ‘Will write 
at once,” my father telegraphed; but I waited long for 
his letter. I was puzzled, angry, and alarmed; but 
thanks to my previous thrift, I cannot say that I was 
ever practically embarrassed. The embarrassment, the 
distress, the agony, were all for my unhappy father 
at home in Muskegon, struggling for life and fortune 
against untoward chances, returning at night from a 
day of ill-starred shifts and ventures, to read and per- 
haps to weep over that last harsh letter from his only 
child, to which he lacked the courage to reply. 
Nearly three months after time, and when my 


a ee oy 


EXTREMES OF FORTUNE 55 


economies were beginning to run low, I received at last 
a letter with the customary bills of exchange. 

“My dearest boy,” it ran, “I believe, in the press of 
anxious business, your letters and even your allowance 
have been somewhat neglected. You must try to for- 
give your poor old dad, for he has had a trying time; 
and now when it is over, the doetor wants me to take 
my shot-gun and go to the Adirondacks for a change. 
You must not fancy I am sick, only over-driven and 
under the weather. Many of our foremost operators 
have gone down: John T. M’Brady skipped to Canada 
with a trunkful of boodle; Billy Sandwith, Charlie 
Downs, Joe Kaiser, and many others of our leading 
men of this city bit the dust. But Big-Head Dodd has 
again weathered the blizzard, and I think I have fixed 
things so that we may be richer than ever before 
autumn. 

“Now I will tell you, my dear, what I propose. You 
Say you are well advanced with your first statue; start 
in manfully and finish it, and if your teacher—I can 
never remember how to spell his name—will send me 
a certificate that it is up to market standard, you shall 
have ten thousand dollars to do what you like with, 
either at home or in Paris. I suggest, since you say 
the facilities for work are so much greater in that city, 
you would do well to buy or build a little home; and 
the first thing you know, your dad will be dropping 
in for a luncheon. Indeed, I would come now, for I am 
beginning to grow old, and I long to see my dear boy; 
but there are still some operations that want watching 
and nursing. Tell your friend, Mr. Pinkerton, that I 
read his letters every week; and though I have looked 
in vain lately for my Loudon’s name, still I learn some- 
thing of the life he is leading in that strange, old 
world, depicted by an able pen.” 

Here was a letter that no young man could possibly 
digest in solitude. It marked one of those junctures 
when the confidant is necessary; and the confidant 
selected was none other than Jim Pinkerton. My 


56 THE WRECKER 


; 
: 
| 
. 


father’s message may have had an influence in this — 
decision; but I scarce suppose so, for the intimacy was — 
already far advanced. I had a genuine and lively taste — 


for my compatriot; I laughed at, I seolded, and I loved 


him. He, upon his side, paid me a kind of doglike | 
service of admiration, gazing at me from afar off as — 


at one who had liberally enjoyed those “advantages” 


which he envied for himself. He followed at heel; — 


his laugh was ready chorus; our friends gave him 


the nickname of “The Henchman.” It was in this. 


insidious form that servitude approached me. 

Pinkerton and I read and re-read the famous news: 
he, I can swear, with an enjoyment as unalloyed and 
far more vocal than my own. The statue was nearly 
done: a few days’ work sufficed to prepare it for exhi- 
bition; the master was approached; he gave his con- 
sent; and one cloudless morning of May beheld us 
vathered in my studio for the hour of trial. The 
master wore his many-hued rosette; he came attended 
by two of my French fellow-pupils—friends of mine 
and both considerable sculptors in Paris at this hour. 
“Corporal John” (as we used to call him), breaking 
for once those habits of study and reserve which have 
since carried him so high in the opinion of the world, 
had left his easel of a morning to countenance a fellow- 
countryman in some suspense. My dear old Romney 
was there by particular request; for who that knew 
him would think a pleasure quite complete unless he 
shared it, or not support a mortification more easily 
if he were present to console? The party was com- 
pleted by John Myner, the Englishman; by the 
brothers Stennis,—Stennis-ainé and Stennis-frére, as 
they used to figure on their accounts at Barbizon—a 
pair of hare-brained Scots; and by the inevitable Jim, 
as white as a sheet and bedewed with the sweat of 
anxiety. , 

I suppose I was little better myself when I unveiled 
the Genius of Muskegon. The master walked about 
it seriously; then he smiled. 


EXTREMES OF FORTUNE 57 


“Tt is already not so bad,” said he, in that funny 
English of which he was so proud. “No, already not so 
bad. 

We all drew a deep breath of relief; and Corporal 
John (as the most considerable junior present) ex- 
plained to him it was intended for a public building, 
a kind of perfecture— 

“Hé! Quoi?” eried he, relapsing into French. 
“Qwest-ce que vous me chantez-la? O, in América,” 
he added, on further information being hastily fur- 
nished. ‘That is anozer sing. O véry good, véry 
good.” 

The idea of the required certificate had to be intro- 
duced to his mind in the light of a pleasantry—the 
fancy of a nabob little more advanced than the red 
Indians of “Fénnimore Cooperr”; and it took all our 
talents combined to conceive a form of words that 
would be acceptable on both sides. One was found, 
however: Corporal John engrossed it in his unde- 
cipherable hand, the master lent it the sanction of his 
name and flourish, I slipped it into an envelope along 
with one of the two letters I had already prepared 
in my pocket, and as the rest of us moved off along the 
boulevard to breakfast, Pinkerton was detached in a 
cab and duly committed it to the post. 

The breakfast was ordered at Lavenue’s, where no 
one need be ashamed to entertain even the master; the 
table was laid in the garden; I had chosen the bill of 
fare myself; on the wine question, we held a council 
of war with the most fortunate results; and the talk, 
as soon as the master laid aside his painful English, 
became fast and furious. There were a few interrup- 
tions, indeed, in the way of toasts. The master’s health 
had to be drunk, and he responded in a little well- 
turned speech, full of neat allusions to. my future and 
to the United States; my health followed; and then my 
father’s must not only be proposed and drunk, but a 
full report must be despatched to him at once by cable- 
gram—an extravagance which was almost the means of 


58 THE WRECKER 


the master’s dissolution. Choosing Corporal John to 
be his confidant (on the ground, I presume, that he 
was already too good an artist to be any longer an 
American except in name) he summed up his amaze- 
ment in one oft-repeated formula—“C’est barbare!” 
Apart from these genial formalities, we talked, talked 
of art, and talked of it as only artists can. Here in 
the South Seas we talk schooners most of the time; in 
the Quarter we talked art with the like unflagging 
interest, and perhaps as much result. . 

Before very long, the master went away; Corporal 
John (who was already a sort of young master) fol- 
lowed on his heels; and the rank and file were naturally 
relieved by their departure. We were now among 
equals; the bottle passed, the conversation sped. I 
think I can still hear the Stennis brothers pour forth 
their copious tirades; Dijon, my portly French fellow- 
student, drop witticisms well-conditioned lke himself; 
and another (who was weak in foreign languages) dash 
hotly into the current of talk with some “Je trove que 
pore oon sontimong de delicacy, Corot . . . ,” or 
some “Pour mot Corot est le plow . . . ;” and then, 
his httle raft of French foundering at once, scramble 
silently to shore again. He at least could understand; 
but to Pinkerton, I think the noise, the wine, the sun, 
the shadows of the leaves, and the esoteric glory of 
being seated at a foreign festival, made up the whole 
available means of entertainment. 

We sat down about half-past eleven; I suppose it 
was two when, some point arising and some particular 
picture being instanced, an adjournment to the Louvre 
was proposed. I paid the score, and in a moment we 
were trooping down the Rue de Renne. It was smoking 
hot; Paris glittered with the superficial brilliancy 


which is so agreeable to the man in high spirits, and — 


in moods of dejection so depressing; the wine sang in 
my ears, it danced and brightened in my eyes. The 
pictures that we saw that afternoon, as we sped 
briskly and loquaciously through the immortal gal- 


7 er ens -“ 


EXTREMES OF FORTUNE 59 


leries, appear to me, upon a retrospect, the loveliest of 
all; the comments we exchanged to have touched the 
highest mark of criticism, grave or gay. 

It was only when we issued again from the museum 
that a difference of race broke up the party. Dijon 
proposed an adjournment to a café, there to finish the 
afternoon on beer; the elder Stennis, revolted at the 
thought, moved for the country, a forest if possible, 
and a long walk. At once the English speakers rallied 
to the name of any exercise; even to me, who have been 
often twitted with my sedentary habits, the thought of 
country air and stillness proved invincibly attractive. 
It appeared, upon investigation, we had just time to 
hail a cab and catch one of the fast trains for Fon- 
tainebleau. Beyond the clothes we stood in, all were 
destitute of what is called (with dainty vagueness) 
personal effects; and it was earnestly mooted, on the 
other side, whether we had not time to call upon the 
way and pack a satchel? But the Stennis boys ex- 
claimed upon our effeminacy. They had come from 
London, it appeared, a week before with nothing but 
great-coats and tooth-brushes. No baggage—there was 
the secret of existence. It was expensive, to be sure; 
for every time you had to comb your hair, a barber 
must be paid, and every time you changed your linen, 
one shirt must be bought and another thrown away; 
but anything was better (argued these young gentle- 
men) than to be slaves of haversacks. “A fellow has 
to get rid gradually of all material attachments; that 
was manhood” (said they); ‘and as long as you were 
bound down to anything,—house, umbrella, or_port- 
‘manteau,—you were stil! tethered by the umbilical 
cord.” Something engaging in this theory carried the 
most of us away. The two Frenchmen, indeed, retired, 
scoffing, to their bock; and Romney, being too poor to 
join the excursion on his own resources and too proud to 
borrow, melted unobtrusively away. Meanwhile the 
remainder of the company crowded the benches of a 
cab; the horse was urged (as horses have to be) by 


60 THE WRECKER 


an appeal to the pocket of the driver; the train caught | 
by the inside of a minute; and in less than an hour — 
and a half we were breathing deep of the sweet air of 
the forest and stretching our legs up the hill from — 
Fontainebleau octroi, bound for Barbizon. That the 
leading members of our party covered the distance in 
fifty-one minutes and a half is (I believe) one of the 
historic landmarks of the colony; but you will scarce 
be surprised to learn that 1 was somewhat in the rear. 
Myner, a comparatively philosophic Briton, kept me 
company in my deliberate advance; the glory of the 
sun’s going down, the fall of the long shadows, the 
inimitable scent and the inspiration of the woods, 
attuned me more and more to walk in a silence which 
progressively infected my companion; and I remem- 
bered that, when at last he spoke, I was startled from 
a deep abstraction. 

“Your father seems to be a pretty good kind of a 
father,” said he. “Why don’t he come to see you?” I © 
was ready with some dozen of reasons, and had more — 
in stock; but Myner, with that shrewdness which made — 
him feared and admired, suddenly fixed me with his — 
eye-glass, and asked, “Ever press him?” 

The blood came in my face. No; I had never pressed — 
him; I had never even encouraged him to come. I was — 
proud of him; proud of his handsome looks, of his 
kind, gentle ways, of that bright face he could show 
when others were happy; proud, too (meanly proud, 
if you like), of his great wealth and startling liberali- | 
ties. And yet he would have been in the way of my — 
Paris life, of much of which he would have disapproved. — 
I had feared to expose to criticism his imnocent re- | 
marks on art; I had told myself, I had even partly 
believed, he did not want to come; I had been (and 
still am) convinced that he was sure to be unhappy — 
out of Muskegon; in short, I had a thousand reasons, 
good and bad, not all of which could alter one iota 
of the fact that I knew he only waited for my invi- 
tation. . 






EXTREMES OF FORTUNE 61 


“Thank you, Myner,” said I; ‘‘you’re a much better 
fellow than ever I supposed. Ill write to-night.” 

“O, you’re a pretty decent sort yourself,” returned 
Myner, with more than his usual flippancy of manner, 
but (as I was gratefully aware) not a trace of his 
occasional irony of meaning. 

Well, these were brave days, on which I could dwell 
for ever. Brave, too, were those that followed, when 
Pinkerton and I walked Paris and the suburbs, viewing 
and pricing houses for my new establishment, or 
covered ourselves with dust and returned laden with 
Chinese gods and brass warming-pans from the dealers 
in antiquities. I found Pinkerton well up in the situ- 
ation of these establishments as well as in the current 
prices, and with quite a smattering of critical judg- 
ment; it turned out he was investing capital in pictures 
and curiosities for the States, and the superficial 
thoroughness of the creature appeared in the fact that, 
although he would never be a connoisseur, he was 
already something of an expert. The things themselves 
left him as near as may be cold; but he had a joy of 
his own in understanding how to buy and sell them. 

In such engagements the time passed until I might 
very well expect an answer from my father. Two mails 
followed each other, and brought nothing. By the 
third I received a long and almost incoherent letter 
of remorse, encouragement, consolation, and despair. 
From this pitiful document which (with a movement 
of piety) I burned as soon as I had read it, I gathered 
that the bubble of my father’s wealth was burst, that 
he was now both penniless and sick; and that I, so far 
from expecting ten thousand dollars to throw away 
in juvenile extravagance, must look no longer for the 
quarterly remittances on which I lived. My case was 
hard enough; but I had sense enough to perceive, and 
decency enough to do my duty. I sold my curiosities, 
or rather I sent Pinkerton to sell them; and he had 
previously bought and now disposed of them so wisely 
that the loss was trifling. This, with what remained 


62 THE WRECKER 


of my last allowance, left me at the head of no less 


than five thousand franes. Five hundred I reserved © 


for my own immediate necessities; the rest I mailed 
inside of the week to my father at Muskegon, where 
they came in time to pay his funeral expenses. 

The news of his death was scarcely a surprise and 
scarce a grief to me. I could not conceive my father 
a poor man. He had led too long a life of thoughtless 
and generous profusion to endure the change; and 
though I grieved for myself, I was able to rejoice that 
my father had been taken from the battle. I grieved, 
I say, for myself; and it is probable there were at the 
same date many thousands of persons grieving with 
less cause. I had lost my father; I had lost the allow- 
ance; my whole fortune (including what had been 
returned from Muskegon) scarce amounted to a thou- 
sand francs; and to crown my sorrows, the statuary 
contract had changed hands. The new contractor had 
a son of his own, or else a nephew; and it was sig- 
nified to me, with business-like plainness, that I must 
find another market for my pigs. In the meanwhile 
I had given up my room, and slept on a truckle-bed in 


a corner of the studio, where as I read myself to sleep — 


at night, and when I awoke in the morning, that now 
useless bulk, the Genius of Muskegon, was ever present 
to my eyes. Poor stone lady! born to be enthroned 
under the gilded echoing dome of the new capitol, 


whither was she now to drift? for what base purposes ~ 


be ultimately broken up, like an unseaworthy ship? 
and what should befall her ill-starred artificer, stand- 
ing, with his thousand franes, on the threshold of a 
life so hard as that of the unbefriended sculptor? 

It was a subject often and earnestly debated by my- 
self and Pinkerton. In his opinion, I should instantly 
discard my profession. “Just drop it, here and now,” 
he would say. “Come back home with me, and let’s 
throw our whole soul into business. I have the capital; 


you bring the culture. Dodd and Pinkerton—I never — 


saw a better name for an advertisement; and you can’t 


ES — 





EXTREMES OF FORTUNE 63 


think, Loudon, how much depends upon a name.”” On 
my side, I would admit that a sculptor should possess 
one of three things—capital, influence, or an energy 
only to be qualified as hellish. The two first I had 
now lost; to the third I never had the smallest claim; 
and yet I wanted the cowardice (or perhaps it was 
the courage) to turn my back on my career without a 
fight. I told him, besides, that however poor my 
chances were in sculpture, I was convinced they were 
yet worse in business, for which I equally lacked taste 
and aptitude. But upon this head, he was my father 
over again; assured me that I spoke in ignorance; that 
any intelligent and cultured person was bound to suc- 
ceed; that I must, besides, have inherited some of my 
father’s fitness; and, at any rate, that I had been 
regularly trained for that career in the commercial 
college. 

“Pinkerton,” I said, “can’t you understand that as 
long as I was there, I never took the smallest interest 
in any stricken thing? The whole affair was poison to 
me.” 

“Tt’s. not. possible,” he would ery; “it can’t. be; you 
-couldn’t live in the midst of it and not feel the charm; 
with all your poetry of soul, you couldn’t help! 
Loudon,” he would go on, “you drive me crazy. You 
expect a man to be all broken up about the sunset, 
and not to care a dime for a place where fortunes 
are fought for and made and lost all day; or for a 
career that consists in studying up life till you have 
it at your finger-ends, spying out every cranny where 
you can get your hand in and a dollar out, and stand- 
ing there in the midst—one foot on bankruptcy, the 
other on a borrowed dollar, and the whole thing spin- 
ning round you like a mill—raking in the stamps, in 
spite of fate and fortune.” 

To this romance of dickering I would reply with 
the romance (which is also the virtue) of art: remind- 
ing him of those examples of constancy through 
many tribulations, with which the rédle of Apollo is 





64 THE WRECKER 


illustrated; from the case of Millet to those of many of 


our friends and comrades, who had chosen this agree- 
able mountain path through life, and were now bravely 
clambering among rocks and brambles, penniless 
and hopeful. 


“You will never understand it, Pinkerton,” I would — 


say. ‘“‘You look to the result, you want to see some 
profit of your endeavours: that is why you could never 


learn to paint, if you lived to be Methusalem. The — 


result is always a fizzle: the eyes of the artist are 


turned in; he lives for a frame of mind. Look at 


Romney, now. There is the nature of the artist. He © 


hasn’t a cent; and if you offered him to-morrow the — 


command of an army, or the presidentship of the 
United States, he wouldn’t take it, and you know he 
wouldn't.” 

“T suppose not,” Pinkerton would ery, scouring his 
hair with both his hands; “and I can’t see why; I can’t 
see what in fits he would be after, not to; I don’t seem 
to rise to these views. Of course, it’s the fault of not 


having had advantages in early life; but, Loudon, I’m ~ 


so miserably low, that it seems to me silly. The fact 
is,’ he might add with a smile, “I don’t seem to have 
the least use for a frame of mind without square 
meals; and you can’t get it out of my head that it’s a 
man’s duty to die rich, if he can.” 

“What for?” I asked him once. 

“O, I don’t know,” he replied. “Why in snakes 
should anybody want to be a sculptor, if you come to © 
that? I would love to sculp myself. But what I can’t 
see is why you should want to do nothing else. It 
seems to argue a poverty of nature.” 


Whether or not he ever came to understand me—and — 


I have been so tossed about since then that I am not 


very sure I understand myself—he soon perceived that — 
I was perfectly in earnest; and after about ten days of 


argument, suddenly . dropped the subject, and an- 


nounced that he was wasting capital, and must go — 
home at once. No doubt he should have gone long 


ee er 


ee eS =~ ee ee ee eee 








EXTREMES OF FORTUNE 65 


before, and had already lingered over his intended 
time for the sake of our companionship and my mis- 
fortune; but man is so unjustly minded that the very 
fact, which ought to have disarmed, only embittered 
my vexation. I resented his departure in the light of 
a desertion; I would not say, but doubtless I betrayed 
it; and something hang-dog in the man’s face and 
bearing led me to believe he was himself remorseful. 
It is certain at least that, during the time of his prep- 
arations, we drew sensibly apart—a circumstance that 
I recall with shame. On the last day, he had me to 
dinner at a restaurant which he knew IJ had formerly 
frequented, and had only forsworn of late from con- 
siderations of economy. He seemed ill at ease; I was 
myself both sorry and sulky; and the meal passed with 
little conversation. 

“Now, Loudon,” said he, with a visible effort, after 
the coffee was come and our pipes lighted, “you can 
never understand the gratitude and loyalty I bear you. 
You don’t know what a boon it is to be taken up by a 
man that stands on the pinnacle of civilisation; you 
ean’t think how it’s refined and purified me, and how 
it’s appealed to my spiritual nature; and I want to 
tell you that I would die at your door like a dog.” 

I don’t know what answer I tried to make, but he 
cut me short. 

“Let me say it out!” he cried. “I revere you for 
your whole-souled devotion to art; I can’t rise to it, 
but there’s a strain of poetry in my nature, Loudon, 
that responds to it. I want you to carry it out, and I 
mean to help you.” 

“Pinkerton, what nonsense is this?” I interrupted. 

“Now don’t get mad, Loudon; this is a plain piece 
of business,” said he; “it’s done every day; it’s even 
typical. How are all those fellows over here in Paris, 
Henderson, Sumner, Long?—it’s all the same story: a 
young man just plum full of artistic genius on the one 
side, a man of business on the other who doesn’t know 
what to do with his dollars a 





66 THE WRECKER 


“But, you fool, you’re as poor as a rat,” I cried. 

“You wait till I get my irons in the fire!” returned 
Pinkerton. “I’m bound to be rich; and I tell you I 
mean to have some of the fun as I go along. Here’s 
your first allowance; take it at the hand of a friend; 
I’m one that holds friendship sacred as you do your- 
self. It’s only a hundred francs; you'll get the same 
every month, and as soon as my business begins to 
expand we’ll increase it to something fitting. And so 
far from it being a favour, just let me handle your 
statuary for the American market, and I'll call it one 
of the smartest strokes of business in my life.” 

It took me a long,time, and it had cost us both much 
grateful and painful emotion, before I had finally man- 
aged to refuse his offer and compounded for a bottle of 
particular wine. He dropped the subject at last sud- 
denly with a “Never mind; that’s all done with,” nor 
did he again refer to the subject, though we passed 
together the rest of the afternoon, and I accompanied 
him, on his departure, to the doors of the waiting-room 
at St. Lazare. I felt myself strangely alone; a voice 
told me that I had rejected both the counsels of wis- 
dom and the helping hand of friendship; and as I 
passed through the great bright city on my homeward 
way, I measured it for the first time with the eye of an 
adversary. 


CHAPTER V 
IN WHICH I AM DOWN ON MY LUCK IN PARIS 


N no part of the world is starvation an agreeable 
business; but I believe it 1s admitted there is no 
worse place to starve in than this city of Paris. The 
appearances of life are there so especially gay, it is 
so much a magnified beer-garden, the houses are so 
ornate, the theatres so numerous, the very pace of the 
vehicles is so brisk, that a man in any deep concern 
of mind or pain of body is constantly driven in upon 
himself. In his own eyes, he seems the one serious 
- ereature moving in a world of horrible unreality; 
voluble people issuing from a café, the queue at 
theatre doors, Sunday cabfuls of second-rate pleasure- 
seekers, the bedizened ladies of the pavement, the show 
in the jewellers’ windows—all the familiar sights con- 
tributing to flout his own happiness, want, and isola- 
tion. At the same time, if he be at all after my 
pattern, he is perhaps supported by a childish satis- 
faction. ‘This is life at last,’ he may tell himself; 
“this is the real thing; the bladders on which I was 
set swimming are now empty, my own weight depends 
upon the ocean; by my own exertions I must perish 
or succeed; and I am now enduring in the vivid fact, 
what I so much delighted to read of in the case of 
Lousteau or Lucien, Rodolphe or Schaunard.” 

Of the steps of my misery, I cannot tell at length. 
In ordinary times what were politically called “loans” 
(although they were never meant to be repaid) were 
matters of constant course among the students, and 
many a man has partly lived on them for years. But 
my misfortune befell me at an awkward juncture. 

. 67 


2 


68 THE WRECKER 


Many of my friends were gone; others were them- 
selves in a precarious situation. Romney (for in- 
stance) was reduced to tramping Paris in a pair of 
country sabots, his only suit of clothes so imperfect 
(in spite of cunningly adjusted pins) that the authori- 
ties at the Luxembourg suggested his withdrawal from 


<= 


the gallery. Dijon, too, was on a lee-shore, designing ~ 


clocks and gas-brackets for a dealer; and the most he 
could do was to offer me a corner of his studio where 
I might work. My own studio (it will be gathered) 
I had by that time lost; and in the course of my ex- 
pulsion the Genius of Muskegon was finally separated 
from her author. To continue to possess a full-sized 
statue, a man must have a studio, a gallery, or at least 
the freedom of a back-garden. He cannot carry it 
about with him, like a satchel, in the bottom of a 
cab, nor can he cohabit in a garret, ten by fifteen, 
with so momentous a companion. It was my first idea 
to leave her behind at my departure. There, in her 
birthplace, she might lend an inspiration, methought, 
to my successor. But the proprietor, with whom I had 
unhappily quarrelled, seized the occasion to be dis- 
agreeable, and called upon me to remove my property. 
For a man in such straits as I now found myself, the 
hire of a lorry was a consideration; and yet even that 
I could have faced, if I had had anywhere to drive to 
after it was hired. Hysterical laughter seized upon 
me, as I beheld (in imagination) myself, the waggoner, 
and the Genius of Muskegon, standing in the publie 
view of Paris, without the shadow of a destination; 
perhaps driving at last to the nearest rubbish-heap, 
and dumping there, among the ordures of a city, the 
beloved child of my invention. From these extremities 
I was relieved by a seasonable offer; and I parted from 
the Genius of Muskegon for thirty franes. Where she 
now stands, under what name she is admired or 
criticised, history does not inform us; but I like to 
think she may adorn the shrubbery of some suburban 


tea-garden, where holiday shop-girls hang their hats | 


DOWN ON MY LUCK IN PARIS 69 


upon the mother, and their swains (by way of an 
approach of gallantry) identify the winged infant with 
the god of love. 

In a certain cabman’s eating-house on the outer 
boulevard I got credit for my midday meal. Supper I 
Was supposed not to require, sitting down nightly to 
the delicate table of some rich acquaintance. This ar- 
rangement was extremely ill-considered. My fable, 
credible enough at first, and so long as my clothes 
were in good order, must have seemed worse than 
doubtful after my coat became frayed about the edges, 
and my boots began to squelch and pipe along the 
_ restaurant floors. ‘The allowance of one meal a day 
besides, though suitable enough to the state of my 
finances, agreed poorly with my stomach. The restau- 
rant was a place I had often visited experimentally, 
_ to taste the life of students then more unfortunate than 
myself; and I had never in those days entered it 
without disgust, or left it without nausea. It was 
strange to find myself sitting down with avidity, rising 
up with satisfaction, and counting the hours that 
divided me from my return to such a table. But 
hunger is a great magician; and so soon as I had spent 
my ready cash, and could no longer fill up on bowls 
of chocolate or hunks of bread, I must depend entirely 
on that cabman’s eating-house, and upon certain rare, 
long-expected, long-remembered windfalls. Dijon (for 
instance) might get paid for some of his pot-boiling 
work, or else an old friend would pass through Paris; 
and then I would be entertained to a meal after my 
own soul, and contract a Latin Quarter loan, which 
would keep me in tobacco and my morning coffee for a 
fortnight. It might be thought the latter would appear 
the more important. It might be supposed that a life, 
led so near the confines of actual famine, should have 
dulled the nicety of my palate. On the contrary, the 
poorer a man’s diet, the more sharply is he set on 
dainties. The last of my ready cash, about thirty 
francs was deliberately squandered on a single dinner; 


70 THE WRECKER 


and a great part of my time when I was alone was 
passed upon the details of imaginary feasts. 

One gleam of hope visited me—an order for a bust 
from a rich Southerner. He was free-handed, jolly of 
speech, merry of countenance; kept me in good humour 
through the sittings, and when they were over, carried 
me off with him to dinner and the sights of Paris. I ate 
well; I laid on flesh; by all accounts, I made a favour- 
able likeness of the being, and I confess I thought my 
future was assured. But when the bust was done, and I 
had despatched it across the Atlantic, I could never so 
much as learn of its arrival. The blow felled me; I 
should have lain down and tried no stroke to right 
myself, had not the honour of my country been in- 
volved. For Dijon improved the opportunity in the 
European style; informing me (for the first time) of 
the manners of America: how it was a den of banditti 
without the smallest rudiment of law or order, and 
debts could be there only collected with a shot-gun. 
“The whole world knows it,’ he would say; “you are 
alone, mon petit Loudon, you are alone to be in igno- 
rance of these facts. The judges of the Supreme Court 
fought but the other day with stilettos on the bench 
at Cincinnati. You should read the little book of 
one of my friends: Le Touriste dans le Far-West; 
you will see it all there in good French.” At last, 
incensed by days of such discussion, I undertook to 
prove to him the contrary, and put the affair in the 
hands of my late father’s lawyer. From him I had 
the gratification of hearing, after a due interval, that 
my debtor was dead of the yellow fever in Key West, 
and had left his affairs in some confusion. I suppress 
his name; for though he treated me with cruel noncha- 
lance, it is probable he meant to deal fairly in the end. 

Soon after this a shade of change in my reception 
at the cabman’s eating-house marked the beginning of 
a new phase in my distress. The first day, I told 
myself it was but fancy; the next, I made quite sure it 
was a fact; the third, in mere panic I stayed away, 


DOWN ON MY LUCK IN PARIS 71 


and went for forty-eight hours fasting. This was an 
act of great unreason; for the debtor who stays away 
is but the more remarked, and the boarder who misses 
a meal is sure to be accused of infidelity. On the 
fourth day, therefore, I returned, inwardly quaking. 
The proprietor looked askance upon my entrance; the 
waitresses (who were his daughters) neglected my 
wants and sniffed at the affected joviality of my salu- 
tations; last and most plain, when I called for a suisse 
(such as was being served to all the other diners) I 
was bhintly told there were no more. Jt was obvious 
I was near the end of my tether; one plank divided me 
from want, and now I felt it tremble. I passed a 
sleepless night, and the first thing in the morning took 
my way to Myner’s studio. It was a step I had long 
meditated and long refrained from; for I was scarce 
intimate with the Englishman; and though I knew 
him to possess plenty of money, neither his manner 
nor his reputation were the least encouraging to 
beggars. 

I found him at work on a picture, which I was able 
conscientiously to praise, dressed in his usual tweeds, 
plain, but pretty fresh, and standing out in disagree- 
able contrast to my own withered and degraded outfit. 
As we talked, he continued to shift his eyes watchfully 
_ between his handiwork and the fat model, who sat at 
the far end of the studio in a state of nature, with one 
arm gallantly arched above her head. My errand 
would have been difficult under the best of circum- 
stances: placed between Myner, immersed in his art, 
and the white, fat, naked female in a ridiculous atti- 
tude, I found it quite impossible. Again and again I 
attempted to approach the point, again and again fell 
back on commendations of the picture; and it was not 
until the model had enjoyed an interval of repose, 
during which she took the conversation in her own 
hands and regaled us (in a soft, weak voice) with de- 
tails as to her husband’s prosperity, her sister’s la- 
mented decline from the paths of virtue, and the 


72 THE WRECKER 


consequent wrath of her father, a peasant of stern 
principles, in the vicinity of Chalons on the Marne;— 
it was not, I say, until after this was over, and I had 
once more cleared my throat for the attack, and once 
more dropped aside into some commonplace about the 
picture, that Myner himself brought me suddenly 
and vigorously to the point. 

“You didn’t come here to talk this rot,” said he. 

“No,” I replied sullenly; “I came to borrow money.” 

He painted a while in silence. 

“I don’t think we were ever very intimate?” he 
asked. 

“Thank you,” said I. “I can take my answer,” and 
I made as if to go, rage boiling in my heart. 

“Of course you can go if you like,” said Myner; 
“but I advise you to stay and have it out.” 

“What more is there to say?” I cried. “You don’t 
want to keep me here for a needless humiliation?” 

“Look here, Dodd, you must try and command your 
temper,” said he. ‘This interview is of your own 
seeking, and not mine; if you suppose it’s not dis- 
agreeable to me, you’re wrong; and if you think I will 
give you money without thoroughly knowing about 
your prospects, you take me for a fool. Besides,” he 
added, “if you come to look at it, you’ve got over the 


worst of it by now: you have done the asking, and you 


have every reason to know I mean to refuse. I hold 


out no false hopes, but it may be worth your while — 


to let me judge.” 

_ Thus—I was going to say—encouraged, I stumbled 
through my story; told him I had credit at the cab- 
man’s eating-house, but began to think it was drawing 
to a close; how Dijon lent me a corner of his studio, 


where I tried to model ornaments, figures for clocks, — 


Time with the scythe, Leda and the swans, musketeers 
for candlesticks, and other kickshaws, which had never 
(up to that day) been honoured with the least 
approval. 

“And your room?” asked Myner. 


" 


. 


DOWN ON MY LUCK IN PARIS 73 


“O, my room is all right, I think,” said I. “She is a 
very good old lady, and has never even mentioned 
her bill.” 

“Because she is a very good old lady, I don’t see why 
she should be fined,” observed Myner. 

“What do you mean by that?” I cried. 

“IT mean this,” said he. “The French give a great 
deal of credit amongst themselves; they find it pays 
on the whole, or the system would hardly be continued; 
but I can’t see where we come in; I can’t see that it’s 
honest of us Anglo-Saxons to profit by their easy ways, 
and then skip over the Channel or (as you Yankees do) 
across the Atlantic.” 

“But I’m not proposing to skip,” I objected. 

“Exactly,” he replied. “And shouldn’t you? There’s 
the problem. You seem to me to have a lack of 
sympathy for the proprietors of cabmen’s eating- 
houses. By your own account you’re not getting on: 
the longer you stay, it’ll only be the more out of the 
pocket of the dear old lady at your lodgings. Now Ill 
tell you what I’ll do: if you consent to go, Vl pay 
your passage to New York, and your railway fare and 
expenses to Muskegon (if I have the name right) where 
your father lived, where he must have left friends, and 
where, no doubt, you’ll find an opening. I don’t seek 
any gratitude, for of course you’ll think me a beast; 
but I do ask you to pay it back when you are able. 
At any rate, that’s all I can do. It might be different 
if I thought you a genius, Dodd; but I don't, and I 
advise you not to.” 

“T think that was uncalled for, at least,” said I. 

“T daresay it was,” he returned, with the same steadi- 
ness. “It seemed to me pertinent; and besides, when 
you ask me for money upon no security, you treat me 
with the liberty of a friend, and it’s to be presumed 
that I can do the like. But the point is, do you 
accept?” 

“No, thank you,” said I; “I have another string to 
my bow.” 


74 THE WRECKER 


“All right,” said Myner. “Be sure it’s honest.” 

“Honest? honest?” I cried. ‘What do you mean by 
calling my honesty in question?” 

“TI won’t, if you don’t like it,’ he replied. ‘You 
seem to think honesty as easy as Blind Man’s Buff: I 
don’t. It’s some difference of definition.” 

I went straight from this irritating interview, during 
which Myner had never discontinued painting, to the 
studio of my old master. Only one card remained 
for me to play, and I was now resolved to play it: 
I must drop the gentleman and the frock-coat, and 
approach art in the workman’s tunic. 

“Tiens, this little Dodd!” cried the master; and then, 
as his eye fell on my dilapidated clothing, I thought 
I could perceive his countenance to darken. 

I made my plea in English; for I knew, if he were 
vain of anything, it was of his achievements of the 
island tongue. ‘Master,’ said I, ‘will you take me in 
your studio again? but this time as a workman.” 

“T sought your fazér was immensely reech,” said he. 

I explained to him that I was now an orphan and 
penniless, 

He shook his head. “I have better workmen waiting 
at my door,” said he; “far better workmen.” 

“You used to think something of my work, sir,” I 
pleaded. 

“Somesing, somesing—yés!” he cried; “énough for 
a son of a reech man—not énough for an orphan. Be- 
sides, I sought you might learn to be an artist; I did 
not sink you might learn to be a workman.” 

On a certain bench on the outer boulevard, not far — 
from the tomb of Napoleon, a bench shaded at that 
date by a shabby tree, and commanding a view of 
muddy roadway and blank wall, I sat down to wrestle 
with my misery. The weather was cheerless and dark; 
in three days I had eaten but once; I had no tobacco; 
my shoes were soaked, my trousers horrid with mire; 
my humour and all the circumstances of the time and 
place lugubriously attuned. Here were two men who 


DOWN ON MY LUCK IN PARIS 75 


had both spoken fairly of my work while I was rich 
and wanted nothing; now that I was poor and lacked 
all: “no genius,” said the one; “not enough for an 
orphan,” the other; and the first offered me my passage 
like a pauper immigrant, and the second refused me 
a day’s wage as a hewer of stone—plain dealing for 
an empty belly. They had not been insincere in the 
past; they were not insincere to-day: change of cir- 
cumstance had introduced a new criterion: that was 
all. 

But if I acquitted my two Job’s comforters of insin- 
cerity, I was yet far from admitting them infallible. 
Artists had been contemned before, and had lived to 
turn the laugh on their contemners. How old was 
Corot before he struck the vein of his own precious 
metal? When had a young man been more derided 
(or more justly so) than the god of my admiration, 
Balzac? Or if I required a bolder inspiration, what 
had I to do but turn my head to where the gold dome 
of the Invalides glittered against inky squalls, and 
recall the tale of him sleeping there: from the day 
when a young artillery-sub could be giggled at and 
nicknamed Puss-in-Boots by frisky misses; on to the 
days of so many crowns and so many victories, and 
so many hundred mouths of cannon, and so many 
thousand war-hoofs trampling the roadways of as- 
tonished Europe eighty miles in front of the grand 
army? To go back, to give up, to proclaim myself a 
failure, an ambitious failure, first a rocket, then a 
stick! I, Loudon Dodd, who had refused all other 
livelihoods with scorn, and been advertised in the 
Saint Joseph Sunday Herald as a patriot and an artist, 
to be returned upon my native Muskegon like damaged 
goods, and go the circuit of my father’s acquaintance, 
cap in hand, and begging to sweep offices! No, by 
Napoleon! I would die at my chosen trade; and the 
two who had that day flouted me should live to envy 
my success, or to weep tears of unavailing penitence 
behind my pauper coffin. 


76 ‘THE WRECKER 


Meantime, if my courage was still undiminished, I | 
was none the nearer to a meal. At no great distance ~ 
my cabman’s eating-house stood, at the tail of a 
muddy cab-rank, on the shores of a wide thorough- — 


fare of mud, offering (to fancy) a face of ambiguous 


invitation. I might be received, I might once more © 


fill my belly there; on the other. hand, it was perhaps 
this day the bolt was destined to fall, and I might 
be expelled, instead, with vulgar hubbub. It was 


policy to make the attempt, and I knew it was policy; © 


but I had already, in the course of that one morning, 


endured too many affronts, and I felt I could rather — 


starve than face another. I had courage and to spare 


for the future, none left for that day; courage for the ~ 


main campaign, but not a spark of it for that pre- 
liminary skirmish of the cabman’s restaurant. I con- 


tinued accordingly to sit upon my bench, not far from — 


the ashes of Napoleon, now drowsy, now light-headed, 
now in complete mental obstruction, or only conscious 
of an animal pleasure in quiescence; and now think- 
ing, planning, and remembering with unexampled clear- 
ness, telling myself tales of sudden wealth, and 
gustfully ordering and greedily consuming imaginary 
meals: in the course of which I must have dropped 
asleep. 

It was towards dark that I was suddenly recalled 


to famine by a cold souse of rain, and sprang shivering ~ 


to my feet. For a moment I stood bewildered: the 
whole train of my reasoning and dreaming passed 


afresh through my mind; I was again tempted, drawn — 
as if with cords, by the image of the cabman’s eating- — 


house, and again recoiled from the possibility of insult. 


“Qua dort dine,’ thought I to myself; and took my | 
homeward way With wav ering footsteps, through rainy 
streets in which the lamps and the shop-windows now ~ 
began to gleam; still marshalling imaginary dinners — 


as I went. 
“Ah, Monsieur Dodd,” said the porter, “there has 


% 


| 


DOWN ON MY LUCK IN PARIS 77 


been a registered letter for you. The facteur will bring 
it again to-morrow.” » 

A registered letter for me, who had been so long 
without one? Of what it could possibly contain, I had 
no vestige of a guess; nor did I delay myself guessing; 
far less form any conscious plan of dishonesty: the 
hes flowed from me like a natural secretion. 

“O,” said I, “my remittance at last! What a bother 
I should have missed it! Can you lend me a hundred 
francs until to-morrow?” 

I had never attempted to borrow from the porter till 
that moment: the registered letter was besides, my 
warranty; and he gave me what he had—three na- 
poleons and some francs in silver. I pocketed the 
money carelessly, lingered awhile chaffing, strolled 
leisurely to the door; and then (fast as my trembling 
legs could carry me) round the corner to the Café de 
Cluny. French waiters are deft and speedy: they were 
not deft enough for me; and I had scarce decency to let 
the man set the wine upon the table or put the butter 
alongside the bread, before my glass and my mouth 

were filled. Exquisite bread of the Café Cluny, ex- 
- quisite first glass of old. Pomard tingling to my wet 
feet, indescribable first olive culled from the hors 
d’ceuvre—I suppose, when I come to dying, and the 
lamp begins to grow dim, I shall still recall your 
savour. Over the rest of that meal, and the rest of the 
evening, clouds lie thick: clouds perhaps of Burgundy ; 
perhaps, more properly, of famine and repletion. _ 

I remember clearly, at least, the shame, the despair, 
of the next morning, when I reviewed what I had done, 
and how I had swindled the poor, honest porter; and, 
as if that were not enough, fairly burnt my ships, and 
brought bankruptcy home to that last refuge, my 
garret. The porter would expect his money; I could 
not pay him; here was scandal in the house; and I 
knew right well, the cause of scandal would have to 
pack. “What.do you mean by calling my honesty in 

question?” I had cried the day before, turning upon 


78 THE WRECKER 


Myner. Ah, that day before! the day before Waterloo, — 
the day before the Flood; the day before I had sold — 
the roof over my head, my future, and my self-respect, 
for a dinner at the Café Cluny! 

In the midst of these lamentations the famous regis- 
tered letter came to my door, with healing under its 
seals. It bore the postmark of San Francisco, where 
Pinkerton was already struggling to the neck in multi- 
farious affairs: it renewed the offer of an allowance, 
which his improved estate permitted him to announce 
at the figure of two hundred francs a month; and in 
case I was in some immediate pinch, it enclosed an~ 
introductory draft for forty dollars. There are a 
thousand excellent reasons why a man, in this self- 
helpful epoch, should decline to be dependent on 
another; but the most numerous and cogent consider- 
ations all bow to a necessity as stern as mine; and 
the banks were scarce open ere the draft was cashed. 

It was early in December that I thus sold myself 
into slavery; and for six months I dragged a slowly 
lengthening chain of gratitude and uneasiness. At the 
cost of some debt I managed to excel myself and 
eclipse the Genius of Muskegon, in a small but highly 
patriotic Standard Bearer for the Salon; whither it was 
duly admitted, where it stood the proper length of 
days entirely unremarked, and whence it came back 
to me as patriotic as before. I threw my whole soul 
(as Pinkerton would have phrased it) into clocks and 
candlesticks; the devil a candlestick-maker would have 
anything to say of my designs. Even when Dijon, 
with his infinite good humour and infinite scorn for all 
such journey-work, consented to peddle them indis- 
criminately with his own, the dealers still detected and 
rejected mine. Home they returned to me, true as the 
Standard Bearer; who now, at the head of quite a 
regiment of lesser idols, began to grow an eyesore 
in the scanty studio of my friend. Dijon and I have 
sat by the hour, and gazed upon that company of 
images. The severe, the frisky, the classical, the Louis — 


DOWN ON MY LUCK IN PARIS 79 


Quinze, were there—from Joan of Are in her soldierly 
cuirass to Leda with the swan; nay, and God forgive 
me for a man that knew better! the humorous was 
represented also. We sat and gazed, I say; we criti- 
cised, we turned them hither and thither; even upon 
the closest inspection they looked quite like statuettes; 
and yet nobody would have a gift of them! 

Vanity dies hard; in some obstinate cases it outlives 
the man: but about the sixth month, when I already 
owed near two hundred dollars to Pinkerton, and half 
as much again in debts scattered about Paris, I awoke 
one morning with a horrid sentiment of oppression, 
and found I was alone: my vanity had breathed her 
last during the night. I dared not plunge deeper in 
the bog; I saw no hope in my poor statuary; I owned 
myself beaten at last; and sitting down in my night- 
shirt beside the window, whence I had a glimpse of the 
tree-tops at the corner of the boulevard, and where the 
music of its early traffic fell agreeably upon my ear, 
I penned my“ farewell to Paris, to art, to my whole 
past life, and my whole former self. “I give in,” I 
wrote. “When the next allowance arrives, I shall go 
straight out West, where you can do what you lke 
with me.” 

It is to be understood that Pinkerton had _ been, 
in a sense, pressing me to come from the beginning; 
depicting his isolation among new acquaintances, “who 
have none of them your culture,” he wrote; expressing 
his friendship in terms so warm that it sometimes 
embarrassed me to think how poorly I could echo 
them; dwelling upon his need for assistance; and the 
next moment turning about to commend my resolution 
and press me to remain in Paris. “Only remember, 
Loudon,” he would write, ‘if you ever do tire of it, 
there’s plenty work here for you—honest, hard, well- 
paid, work developing the resources of this practically 
virgin State. And of course I needn’t say what a 
pleasure it would be to me if we were going at it 
shoulder to shoulder.” I marvel (looking back) that 


80 THE WRECKER 


I could so long have resisted these appeals, and con- 
tinued to sink my friend’s money in a manner that I 
knew him to dislike. At least, when I did awake to 
any sense of my position, I awoke to it entirely; and 
determined not only to follow his counsel for the 
future, but even as regards the past, to rectify his 
losses. For in this juncture of affairs I called to mind 
that I was not without a possible resource and resolved, 
at. whatever cost of mortification, to beard the Loudon 
family in their historic city. 

In the excellent Scots phrase, I made a moonlight 
flitting, a thing never dignified, but in my case un- 
usually easy. “As I had searce a pair of boots worth™ 
portage, I deserted the whole of my effects without a 
pang. Dijon fell heir to Joan of Arc, the Standard 
Bearer, and the Musketeers. He was present when I 
bought and frugally stocked my new portmanteau; 
and it was at the door of the trunk-shop that I took 
my leave of him, for my last fewshours in Paris must 
be spent alone. It was alone (and ata far higher 
figure than my francs warranted) that I discussed my 
dinner; alone that I took my ticket at Saint Lazare; all 
alone, though in a carriage full of people, that I 
watched the moon shine on the Seine flood with its 
tufted islets, on Rouen with her spires, and on the 
shipping in the harbour of Dieppe. When the first 
light of the morning called me from troubled slumbers 
on the deck, I beheld the dawn at first with pleasure; — 
I watched with pleasure the green shores of England 
rising out of rosy haze; I took the salt air with delight 
into my nostrils; and then all came back to me; that 
I was no longer an artist, no longer myself; that I was 
leaving all I cared for, and returning to all that I 
detested, the slave of debt and gratitude, a public and 
a branded failure. 

From this picture of my own disgrace and wretched- 
ness, it is not wonderful if my mind turned with relief 
to the thought of Pinkerton, waiting for me, as I knew, — 
with unwearied affection, and regarding me with a 


DOWN ON MY LUCK IN PARIS 81 


respect that I had never deserved, and might therefore 
fairly hope that I should never forfeit. The inequality 
of our relation struck me rudely. I must have been 
stupid, indeed, if I could have considered the history 
of that friendship without shame—I, who had given so 
little, who had accepted and profited by so much. I 
had the whole day before me in London, and I deter- 
mined (at least in words) to set the balance somewhat 
straighter. Seated in a corner of a public place, and 
calling for sheet after sheet of paper, I poured forth 
the expression of my gratitude, my penitence for the 
past, my resolutions for the future. Till now, I told 
him, my course had been mere selfishness. I had been 
selfish to my father and to my friend, taking. their 
help, and denying them (what was all they asked) the 
poor gratification of my company and countenance. 

Wonderful are the consolations of literature! As 
soon as that letter was written and posted, the con- 
sciousness of virtue glowed in my veins like some rare 
vintage. 


CHAPTER VI 
IN WHICH I GO WEST 


I REACHED my uncle’s door next morning in time 
to sit down with the family at breakfast. More than 
three years had intervened almost without mutation in 
that stationary household, since I had sat there first, 
a young American freshman, bewildered among un- 
familiar dainties, finnan haddock, kippered salmon, 
baps and mutton ham, and wearied my mind in vain 
to guess what should be under the tea-cozy. If there 
were any change at all, it seemed that I had risen in 
the family esteem. My father’s death once fittingly 
referred to, with a ceremonial lengthening of Scots 
upper lips and wagging of the female head, the party 
launched at once (God help me) into the more cheerful 
topic of my own successes. They had been so pleased 
to hear such good accounts of me; I was quite a great 
man now; where was that beautiful statue of the 
Genius of Something or other? “You haven’t it here? 
not here? Really?” asks the sprightlest of my 
cousins, shaking curls at me; as though it were likely 
I had brought it in the cab, or kept it concealed about 
my person like a birthday surprise. In the bosom of 
this family, unaccustomed to the tropical nonsense of 
the West, it became plain the Sunday Herald and poor, 
blethering Pinkerton had been accepted for their face. 
It is not possible to invent a circumstance that could 
have more depressed me; and I am conscious that I 
behaved all through that breakfast like a whipped 
schoolboy. , 
At length, the medl and family prayers being both 
happily over, I requested the favour of an interview 
82 


IN WHICH I GO WEST 83 


with Uncle Adam on the “state of my affairs.” At 
sound of this ominous expression, the good man’s face 
conspicuously lengthened; and when my grandfather, 
having had the proposition repeated to him (for he was 
hard of hearing) announced his intention of being 
present at the interview, I could not but think that 
Uncle Adam’s sorrow kindled into momentary irri- 
tation. Nothing, however, but the usual grim cor- 
diality appeared upon the surface; and we all three 
passed ceremoniously to the adjoining library, a 
gloomy theatre for a depressing piece of business. My 
grandfather charged a clay pipe, and sat tremendously 
smoking in a corner of the fireless chimney; behind 
him, although the morning was both chill and dark, 
the window was partly open and the blind partly 
down: [ cannot depict what an air he had of being out 
of place, like a man shipwrecked there. Uncle Adam 
had his station at the business-table in the midst. 
Valuable rows of books looked down upon the place 
of torture; and I could hear sparrows chirping in the 
garden, and my sprightly cousin already banging the 
piano and pouring forth an acid stream of song from 
the drawing-room overhead. 

It was in these circumstances that, with all brevity 
of speech and a certain boyish sullenness of manner, 
looking the while upon the floor, I informed my rela- 
tives of my financial situation: the amount I owed 
Pinkerton; the hopelessness of any maintenance from 
sculpture; the career offered me in the States; and how, 
before becoming more beholden to a stranger, I had 
judged it right to lay the case before my family. 

“I am only sorry you did not come to me at first,” 
said Uncle Adam. “I take the liberty to say it would 
have been more decent.” 

“T think so too, Uncle Adam,” I replied; “but you 
must bear in mind I was ignorant in what light you 
might regard my application.” 

“T hope I would never turn my back on my own 
flesh and blood,” he returned with emphasis; but to my 


84 THE WRECKER 


anxious ear, with more of temper than affection. “I 
could never forget you were my sister’s son. I regard 
this as a manifest duty. I have no choice but to accept 
the entire responsibility of the position you have 
made.” 

I did not know what else to do but murmur “thank 
you.” 

“Yes,” he pursued, “and there is something provi- 
dential in the circumstance that you come at the right 
time. In my old firm there is a vacancy; they call 
themselves Italian Warehousemen now,” he continued, 
regarding me with a twinkle of humour; “so you may 
think yourself in luck: we were only grocers in my 
day. I shall place you there to-morrow.” 

“Stop a moment, Uncle Adam,” I broke in. “This is 
not at all what I am asking. I ask you to pay Pinker- 
ton, who is a poor man. I ask you to clear my feet 
of debt, not to arrange my life or any part of it.” 

“If I wished to be harsh, I might remind you that 
beggars cannot be choosers,” said my uncle; “and as to 
managing your life, you have tried your own way 
already, and you see what you have made of it. You 
must now accept the guidance of those older and (what- 
ever you may think of it) wiser than yourself. All 
these schemes of your friend (of whom I know nothing, 
by the by) and talk of openings in the West, I simply 
disregard. I have no idea whatever of your going 
troking across a continent on a wild-goose chase. In 
this situation, which I am fortunately able to place 
at your disposal, and which many a well-conducted 
young man would be glad to jump at, you will receive, 
to begin with, eighteen shillings a week.” 

“Eighteen shillings a week!” I cried. “Why, my 
poor friend gave me more than that for nothing!” 

“And I think it is this very friend you are now 
trying to repay?” observed my uncle, with an air of 
one advancing a strong argument. 

“Aadam!” said my grandfather. | 

‘“T’m vexed you should be present at this bhaimate eae 


ae 


IN WHICH I GO WEST 85 


quoth Uncle Adam, swinging rather obsequiously to- 
wards the stonemason; “but I must remind you it is 
of your own seeking.” 

“Aadam!” repeated the old man. 

“Well, sir, I am listening,” says my uncle. 

My grandfather took a puff or two in silence; and 
then, ‘Ye’re makin’ an awful poor appearance, 
Aadam,” said he. 

My uncle visibly reared at the affront. “I’m sorry 
you should think so,” said he, “and still more sorry 
you should say so before present company.” 

“A believe that; A ken that, Aadam,” returned old 
Loudon, dryly; “and the curiis thing is, I’m no very 
carin’. See here, ma man,” he continued, addressing 
himself to me. “A’m your grandfaither, amn’t I not? 
Never you mind what Aadam says. <All see justice din 
ye. A’m rich.” 

“Father,” said Uncle Adam, “I would like one word 
with you in private.” 

I rose to go. 

“Set down upon your hinderlands,” cried my grand- 
father, almost. savagely. “If Aadam has anything to 
say, let him say it. It’s me that has the money here; 
and by Gravy! I’m goin’ to be obeyed.” 

Upon this scurvy encouragement, it appeared that 
my uncle had no remark to offer: twice challenged to 
“speak out and be done with it,” he twice sullenly 
declined; and I may mention that about this period of 
the engagement, I began to be sorry for him. 

“See here, then, Jeannie’s yin!” resumed my 
grandfather. “A’m going to give ye a set-off. Your 
mither was always my fav’rite, for A never could agree 
with Aadam. A like ye fine yoursel’; there’s nae noan- 
sense aboot ye; ye’ve a fine nayteral idee of builder’s 
work; ye’ve been to France, where they tell me they’re 
grand at the stuccy. A splendid thing for ceilin’s, the 


 stuccy! and it’s a vailyable disguise, too; A don’t be- 
_ lieve there’s a. builder in Scotland has used more stuccy 


than me. But as A was sayin’, if ye’ll follie that trade, 


86 THE WRECKER 


with the capital that A’m goin’ to give ye, ye may live 
yet to be as rich as mysel’. Ye see, ye would have 
always had a share of it when A was gone; it appears 
ye’re needin’ it now; well, ye’ll get the less, as is only 
just and proper.” 

Uncle Adam cleared his throat. ‘This is very hand- 
some father,’ said he; “and I am sure Loudon feels 
it so. Very handsome, and as you say, very just; but 
will you allow me to say that it had better, perhaps, 
be put in black and white?” 

The enmity always smouldering between the two 
men at this ill-judged interruption almost burst in 
flame. The stonemason turned upon his offspring, his 
long upper lip pulled down, for all the world, like a 
monkey’s. He stared a while in virulent silence; and 
then, ‘““Get Gregg!” said he. 

The effect of these words were very visible. “He will 
be gone to his office,” stammered my uncle. 

“Get Gregg!” repeated my grandfather. 

“T tell you, he will be gone to his office,” reiterated 
Adam, 

“And I tell ye, he’s takin’ his smoke,” retorted the 
old man. 

“Very well, then,” cried my uncle, getting to his feet 
with some alacrity, as upon a sudden change of 
thought, “I will get him myself.” 

“Ye will not!” cried my grandfather. “Ye will sit 
there upon your hinderland.” 

“Then how the devil am I to get him?” my uncle 
broke forth, with not unnatural petulance. 

My grandfather (having no possible answer) grinned 
at his son with the malice of a schoolboy; then he rang 
the bell. 

“Take the garden key,” said Uncle Adam to the 
servant; “go over to the garden, and if Mr. Gregg the 
lawyer is there (he generally sits under the red haw- 
thorn), give him old Mr. Loudon’s compliments, and 
will he step in here for a moment?” : 

“Mr. Gregg the lawyer!” At once I understood 





IN WHICH I GO WEST 87 


(what had been puzzling me) the significance of my 
grandfather and the alarm of my poor uncle: the stone- 
mason’s will, it was supposed, hung trembling in the 
balance. 

“Look here, grandfather,” I said, “I didn’t want any 
of this. All I wanted was a loan of (say) two hundred 
pounds. I can take care of myself; I have prospects 
and opportunities, good friends in the States id 

The old man waved me down. “It’s me that speaks 
here,” he said curtly; and we waited the coming of the 
lawyer in a triple silence. He appeared at last, the 
maid ushering him in—a spectacled, dry but not un- 
genial-looking man. 

“Here, Gregg,” cried my grandfather. “Just a ques- 
tion. What has Aadam got to do with my will?” 

“T’m afraid I don’t quite understand,” said the law- 
ver, staring. 

“What has he got to do with it?” repeated the old 
man, smiting with his fist upon the arm of his chair. 
“Is my money mine’s, or is it Aadam’s? Can Aadam 
interfere?” 

“O, I see,” said Mr. Gregg. “Certainly not. On the 
marriage of both of your children a certain sum was 
paid down and accepted in full of legitim. You have 

surely not forgotten the circumstance, Mr. Loudon?” 
“So that, if I lke,’ concluded my grandfather, 
hammering out his words, “I can leave every doit I 
die possessed of to the Great Magunn?’’—meaning 
probably the Great Mogul. 

“No doubt of it,” replied Gregg, with a shadow of 
a smile. 

“Ye hear that, Aadam?” asked my grandfather. 

“IT may be allowed to say I had no need to hear it,” 
said my uncle. 

“Very well,” says my grandfather. “You and 
Jeannie’s yin can go for a bit walk. Me and Gregg 
has business.” 

When once I was in the hall alone with Uncle Adam, 
I turned to him, sick at heart. “Uncle Adam,” I said, 





88 THE WRECKER 


“you can understand better than I can say, how very 
painful all this is to me.” 

“Yes, I am sorry you have seen your grandfather 
in so unamiable a light,” replied this extraordinary 
man. “You shouldn’t allow it to affect your mind 
though. He has sterling qualities, quite an extraor- 
dinary character; and I have no fear but he means to 
behave handsomely to you.” 

His composure was beyond my imitation: the house 
could not contain me, nor could I even promise to 
return to it: in concession to which weakness, it was 
agreed that I should call in about an hour at the office 
of the lawyer, whom (as he left the hbrary) Uncle 
Adam should waylay and inform of the arrangement. 
I suppose there was never a more topsy-turvy situ- 
ation: you would have thought it was I who had 
suffered some rebuff, and that iron-sided Adam was a 
generous conqueror who scorned to take advantage. 

It was plain enough that I was to be endowed: to 
what extent and upon what conditions I was now left 
for an hour to meditate in the wide and solitary 
thoroughfares of the new town, taking counsel with 
street-corner statues of George IV, and William Pitt, 
improving my mind with the pictures in the window 
of a music-shop, and renewing my acquaintance with 
Edinburgh east wind. By the end of the hour I made 
my way to Mr. Gregg’s office, where I was placed, 
with a few appropriate words, in possession of a cheque 


for two thousand pounds and a small parcel of archi. 


tectural works. 
“Mr. Loudon bids me add,” continued the lawyer, 
consulting a little sheet of notes, “that although these 


volumes are very valuable to the practical builder, you — 
must be careful not to lose originality. He tells you ~ 


also not to be ‘hadden doun’—his own expression—by 
the theory of strains, and that Portland cement, 
properly sanded, will go a long way.” 
I smiled and remarked that I supposed it would. 
“T once lived in one of my excellent client’s houses,” 


7 
4 


IN WHICH I GO WEST 89 


observed the lawyer; “and I was tempted, in that case, 
to think it had gone far enough.”’ 

“Under these circumstances, sir,” said I, “you will 
be rather relieved to hear that I have no intention of 
becoming a builder.” 

At this, he fairly laughed; and, the ice being broken, 
I was able to consult with him as to my conduct. He 
insisted I must return to the house, at least, for 
luncheon and one of my walks with Mr. Loudon. ‘For 
the evening, I will furnish you with an excuse, if you 
please,” said he, “by asking you to a bachelor dinner 
with myself. But the luncheon and the walk are 
unavoidable. He is an old man, and, I believe, really 
fond of you; he would naturally feel aggrieved if there 
were any appearance of avoiding him; and as for Mr. 
Adam, do you know, I think your delicacy out of 
place. . . . And now, Mr. Dodd, what are you 
to do with this money?” 

Ay, there was the question. With two thousand 
pounds—fifty thousand francs—I might return to Paris 
and the arts, and be a prince and millionaire in that 
thrifty Latin Quarter. I think I had the grace, with 
one corner of my mind, to be glad that I had sent the 
London letter: I know very well that with the rest and 
worst of me, I repented bitterly of that precipitate 
act. On one point, however, my whole multiplex estate 
of man was unanimous: the letter being gone, there 
was no help but I must follow. The money was ac- 
cordingly divided into two unequal shares: for the 
first, Mr. Gregg got me a bill in the name of Dijon 
to meet my liabilities in Paris; for the second, as I 
had already cash in hand for the expenses of my 
journey, he supplied me with drafts on San Francisco. 

The rest of my business in Edinburgh, not to dwell 
on a very agreeable dinner with the lawyer or the 
horrors of the’ family luncheon, took the form of an 
excursion with the stonemason, who led me this 
time to no suburb or work of his old hands, but with 
an impulse both natural and pretty, to that more 


90 ‘THE WRECKER 


enduring home which he had chosen for his clay. It 
was in a cemetery, by some strange chance, immured 
within the bulwarks of a prison; standing, besides, on 
the margin of a cliff, crowded with elderly stone me- 
morials, and green with turf and ivy. The east wind 
(which I thought too harsh for the old man) con- 
tinually shook the boughs, and the thin sun of a Seot- 
tish summer drew their dancing shadows. 

“T wanted ye to see the place,” said he. “Yon’s the 
stane. Huphemia Ross: that was my goodwife, your 
grandmither—hoots! I’m wrong; that was my first 
yin; I had no bairns by her;—yours is the second 
Mary Murray, Born 1819, Died 1850: that’s her—a 
fine, plain, decent sort. of a creature, tak’ her athe- 
gether. Alexander Loudon, Born Seventeen Ninety- 
Twa, Died and then a hole in the ballant: that’s 
me. Alexander’s my name. They ca’d me Ecky when 
I was a boy. Eh, Ecky! ye’re an awful auld man!” 

I had a second and sadder experience of graveyards 
at my next alighting-place, the city of Muskegon, now 
rendered conspicuous by the dome of the new capitol 
encaged in scaffolding. It was late in the afternoon 
when I arrived, and raining; and as I walked in great 
streets, of the very name of which I was quite igno- 
rant—double, treble, and quadruple lines of horse-cars 
jingling by—hundred-fold wires of telegraph and tele- 
phone matting heaven above my head—huge, staring 
houses, garish and gloomy, flanking me from either 
hand—the thought of the Rue Racine, ay, and of the 
cabman’s eating-house, brought tears to my eyes. ‘The 
whole monotonous Babel had grown, or I should rather 
say swelled, with such a leap since my departure, that 
I must continually inquire my way, and the very 
cemetery was brand new. Death, however, had been 
active; the graves were already numerous, and I must 
pick my. way in the rain, among the tawdry sepulchres 
of millionaires, and past the plain, black crosses of 
Hungarian labourers, till chance or instinct led me to 
the place that was my father’s. The stone had been 





hh eat ae alien 


IN WHICH I GO WEST 91 


erected (I knew already) “by admiring friends”; I 
could now judge their taste in monuments; their taste 
in literature, methought, I could imagine, and _ re- 
frained from drawing near enough to read the terms 
of the inscription, But the name was in larger letters 
and stared at me—James K. Dodd. What a singular 
thing is a name, I thought; hew it clings to a man, 
and continually misrepresents, and then survives him; 
and it flashed across my mind, with a mixture of regret 
and bitter mirth, that I had never known, and now 
probably never should know, what the K had repre- 
sented. King, Kilter, Kay, Kaiser, I went, running 
over names at random, and then stumbled with ludi- 
crous misspelling on Kornelius, and had nearly laughed 
aloud. I have never been more childish; I suppose 
(although the deeper voices of my nature seemed all 
dumb) because I have never been more moved. And 
at this last incongruous antic of my nerves, I was 
seized with a panic of remorse and fled the cemetery. 

Scarce less funereal was the rest of my experience 
in Muskegon, where, nevertheless, I lingered, visiting 
my father’s circle, for some days. It was in piety to 
him I lingered; and I might have spared myself the 
pain. His memory was already quite gone out. For 
his sake, indeed, I was made welcome; and for mine 
the conversation rolled a while with laborious effort 
on the virtues of the deceased. His former comrades 
dwelt, in my company, upon his business talents or his 
generosity for public purposes; when my back was 
‘turned, they remembered him no more. My father 
had loved me; I had left him alone to live and die 
among the indifferent; now I returned to find him dead 
and buried and forgotten. Unavailing penitence trans- 
lated itself in my thoughts to fresh resolve. There 
was another poor soul who loved me: Pinkerton. I 
must not be guilty twice of the same error. 

A week perhaps had been thus wasted, nor had I 
‘prepared my friend for the delay. Accordingly, when 
T had changed trains at Council Bluffs, I was aware of 


92 THE WRECKER 


a Man appearing at the end of the car with a telegram ~ 
in his hand and inquiring whether there were any one 
aboard ‘“‘of the name of London Dodd?” I thought 
the name near enough, claimed the despatch, and found 
it was from Pinkerton: “What day do you arrive? 
Awfully important.” I sent him an answer giving day 
and hour, and at Ogden found a fresh despatch await- 
ing me: “That will do. Unspeakable relief. Meet 
you at Sacramento.” In Paris days I had a private — 
name for Pinkerton: ‘The Irrepressible’ was what 
I called him in hours of bitterness; and the name rose — 
once more on my lips. What mischief was he up to © 
now? What new bowl was my benignant monster 
brewing for his Frankenstein? In what new imbroglio 
should I alight on the Pacifie coast? My trust in the 
man was entire, and my distrust perfect. I knew he — 
would never mean amiss; but I was convinced he would ~ 
almost never (in my sense) do aright. | 
I suppose these vague anticipations added a shade — 
of gloom to that already gloomy place of travel: — 
Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, scowled in my — 
face at last, and seemed to point me back again to © 
that other native land of mine, the Latin Quarter. 
But when the Sierras had been climbed, and the train, 
after so long beating and panting, stretched itself upon — 
the downward track—when I beheld the vast extent of — 
prosperous country rolling seaward, from the woods — 
and the blue mountains, that illimitable spread of rip- — 
pling corn, the trees erowing and blowing in the merry — 
weather, the country boys thronging aboard the train © 
with figs and peaches, and the conductors, and the — 
very darky stewards, visibly exulting in the change— — 
up went my soul like a balloon; Care fell from his — 
perch upon my shoulders; and when. I spied my F 
Pinkerton among the crowd at Sacramento, I thought — 
of nothing but to shout and wave for him, and grasp — 
him by the hand, like what he was—my dearest friend. 
“Q Loudon!” he cried. “Man, how I’ve pined for 
you! And you haven’t come an hour too soon. You're 






a 


IN WHICH I GO WEST 93 


known here and waited for; I’ve been booming you 
already; you're billed for a lecture to-morrow night; 
Student Life in Paris, Grave and Gay: twelve hundred 
places booked at the last stock! Tut, man, you’re 
looking thin! Here, try a drop of this.” And he 
produced a case bottle, staringly labelled Prnxerron’s 
THIRTEEN Star GOLDEN State Branpy, WARRANTED 
ENTIRE. 

“God bless me!” said I, gasping and winking after 
my first plunge into this fiery fluid. ‘And what does 
‘Warranted Entire’ mean?” 

“Why, Loudon! you ought to know that!” cried 
Pinkerton. “It’s real, copper-bottomed English; you 
see it on all the old-time wayside hostelries over there.” 

“But if I’m not mistaken, it means something War- 
ranted Entirely different,” said I, ‘‘and applies to the 
public-house, and not the beverages sold.” 

“It’s very possible,” said Jim, quite unabashed. “It’s 
effective, anyway; and I can tell you, sir, it has 
boomed that spirit: it goes now by the gross of cases. 
By the way, I hope you won’t mind; I’ve got your 
portrait all over San Francisco for the lecture, enlarged 
from that carte-de-visite: H. Loudon Dodd, the 
Americo-Parisienne Sculptor. Here’s a proof of the 
small handbills, the posters are the same, only in red 
and blue, and the letters fourteen by one.” 

I looked at the handbill, and my head turned. What 
was the use of words? why seek to explain to Pinker- 
ton the knotted horrors of “Americo-Parisienne”’? He 
took an early occasion to point it out as “rather a good 
phrase; gives the two sides at a glance: I wanted the 
lecture written up to that.” Even after we had reached 
San Francisco, and at the actual physical shock of my 
own effigy placarded on the streets I had broken forth 
in petulant words, he never comprehended in the least 
the ground of my aversion. 

“Tf I had only known: you disliked red lettering!” 
was as high ashe could rise: “You are perfectly right: 
a clear-cut black is preferable, and shows a great 


94 THE WRECKER 


deal further. The only thing that pains me is the por- — 
trait: I own I thought that a success. I’m dreadfully 
and truly sorry, my dear fellow: I see now it’s not what 
you had a right to expect; but I did it, Loudon, for the 
best; and the press is all delighted.” 

At the moment, sweeping through green tule swamps, 

I fell direct on the essential. “But, Pinkerton,” I 
cried, “this lecture is the maddest of your madnesses. 
How can I prepare a lecture in thirty hours?” 

“All done, Loudon!” he exclaimed in triumph. “All 
ready. Trust me to pull a piece of business through. 
You'll find it all type-written in my desk at home. I 
put the best talent of San Francisco on the job: Harry 
Miller, the brightest pressman in the city.” 

And so he rattled on, beyond reach of my modest 
protestations, blurting out his complicated interests, 
crying up his new acquaintances, and ever and again 
hungering to introduce me to some ‘“whole-souled, 
grand fellow, as sharp as a needle,” from whom, and 
the very thought of whom, my spirit shrank instinc- 
tively. 

Well. I was in for it; in for Pinkerton, in for the 
portrait, in for the type-written lecture. One promise 
I extorted—that I was never again to be committed 
in ignorance; even for that, when I saw how its ex- 
tortion puzzled and depressed the Irrepressible, my 
soul repented me; and in all else I suffered myself to — 
be led uncomplaining at his chariot wheels. The Irre- 
oe at did I say? The Irresistible were nigher 
truth. 

But the time to have seen me was when I sat down 
to Harry Miller’s lecture. He was a facetious dog, this 
Harry Miller; he had a gallant way of skirting the 
indecent which (in my case) produced physical nausea; — 
and he could be sentimental and even melodramatic — 
about grisettes and starving genius. I found he had — 
enjoyed the benefit of my correspondence with Pinker- 
ton: adventures of my own were here and there — 
horridly misrepresented, sentiments of my own echoed ; 


IN WHICH I GO WEST 95 


and exaggerated till I blushed to recognise them. I 
will do Harry Miller justice: he must have had a kind 
of talent, almost of genius; all attempts to lower his 
tone proving fruitless, and the Harry-Millerism in- 
eradicable. Nay, the monster had a certain key of 
style, or want of style, so that certain milder passages, 
which I sought to introduce, discorded horribly, and 
impoverished (if that were possible) the general effect. 

By an early hour of the numbered evening I might 
have been observed at the sign of the Poodle Dog, 
dining with my agent: so Pinkerton delighted to de- 
scribe himself. Thence, like an ox to the slaughter, 
he led me to the hall, where I stood presently alone, 
confronting assembled San Francisco, with no better 
allies than a table, a glass of water, and a mass of 
manuscript and type-work, representing Harry Miller 
and myself. I read the lecture; for I had lacked both 
time and will to get the trash by heart—read it hur- 
riedly, humbly, and with visible shame. Now and then 
I would catch in the auditorium an eye of some in- 
telligence, now and then, in the manuseript, would 
stumble on a richer vein of Harry Miller, and my heart 
would fail me, and I gabbled. The audience yawned, it 
stirred uneasily, it muttered, grumbled, and broke forth 
at last in articulate cries of “Speak up” and ‘‘Nobody 
can hear!” I took to skipping, and being extremely ill- 
acquainted with the country, almost invariably cut in 
again in the unintelligible midst of some new topic. 
What struck me as extremely ominous, these misior- 
tunes were allowed to pass without a laugh. Indeed, I 
was beginning to fear the worst, and even personal in- 
dignity, when all at once the humour of the thing 
broke upon me strongly. JI could have laughed aloud; 
and being again summoned to speak up, I faced my 
patrons for the first time with a smile. “Very well,” I 
said, “I will try; though I don’t suppose anybody 
wants to hear, and I can’t see why anybody should.” 
Audience and lecturer laughed together till the tears 
ran down; vociferous and repeated applause hailed my 


96 THE WRECKER 


impromptu sally. Another hit which I made but a little — 
after, as I turned three pages of the copy: “You see — 
I am leaving out as much as I possibly can,” increased 
the esteem with which my patrons had begun to regard 
me; and when I left the stage at last, my departing © 
form was cheered with laughter, stamping, shouting, © 
and the waving of hats. 

Pinkerton was in the waiting-room, feverishly jot- 
ting in his pocket-book. As he saw me enter, he sprang — 
up, and I declare, the tears were trickling on his cheeks, 

“My dear boy,” he cried, “I can never forgive my- — 
self, and you can never forgive me. Never mind: [ — 
did it for the best. And how nobly you clung on! I © 
dreaded we should have had to return the money at — 
the doors.” 

“Tt would have been more or if we had,” said I. © 

The pressmen followed me, Harry Miller in the front — 
ranks; and I was amazed to find them, on the whole, a — 
pleasant set of lads, probably more sinned against than — 
sinning, and even Harry Miller apparently a gentle- © 
man. JI had in oysters and champagne—for the re- © 
ceipts were excellent—and being in a high state of — 
nervous tension kept the table in a roar. Indeed, I — 
was never in my life so well inspired as when I de- 
scribed my vigil over Harry Miller’s literature or the — 
series of my emotions as I faced the audience. The — 
lads vowed I was the soul of good company and the 
prince of lecturers; and—so wonderful an institution is © 
the popular press—if you had seen the notices next ; 
day in all the papers, you must have supposed my eve- — 
ning’s entertainment an unqualified success. 

I was in excellent spirits when I returned home that 
night, but the miserable Pinkerton sorrowed for us 
both. 

“O, Loudon,” he said, “I shall never forgive my- — 
self. When I saw you didn’t catch on to the idea of 
the lecture, 1 should have given it myself!” : 







z 
& 
4 
$ 
4 


CHAPTER VIL 
IRONS IN THE FIRE 
Opes Strepritumque 


HE food of the body differs-not so greatly for 

the fool or the sage, the elephant or the cock- 
sparrow; and similar chemical elements, variously dis- 
guised, support all mortals. A brief study of Pinkerton 
in his new setting convinced me of a kindred truth 
about that other and mental digestion, by which we 
extract what is called “fun for our money” out of life. 
In the same spirit as a schoolboy, deep in Mayne Reid, 
handles a dummy gun and crawls among imaginary 
forests, Pinkerton sped through Kearney Street upon 
his daily business, representing to himself a highly col- 
oured part in life’s performance, and happy for hours 
if he should have chanced to brush against a million- 
aire. Reality was his romance; he gloried to be thus 
engaged; he wallowed in his business. Suppose a man 
_to dig up a galleon on the Coromandel coast, his rakish 
schooner keeping the while an offing under easy sail, 
and he, by the blaze of a great fire of wreckwood, to 
measure ingots by the bucketful on the uproarious 
beach: such an one might realise a greater material 
spoil; he should have no more profit of romance than 
Pinkerton when he cast up his weekly balance-sheet 
in a bald office. Every dollar gained was like some- 
thing brought ashore from a mysterious deep; every 
venture made was like a diver’s plunge; and as he 
thrust his bold hand into the plexus of the money- 
market, he was delightedly aware of how he shook the 
pillars of existence, turned out men (as at a battle-cry) 

97 


98 THE WRECKER 


to labours in far countries, and set the gold twitching 
in the drawers of millionaires. 

I could never fathom the full extent of his specula- 
tions; but there were five separate businesses which he 
avowed and carried like a banner. The Thirteen Star 
Golden State Brandy, Warranted Entire (a very fla- 
grant distillation) filled a great part of his thoughts 
and was kept before the public in an eloquent but 
misleading treatise: Why Drink French Brandy? <A 
Word to the Wise. He kept an office for advertisers, 
counselling, designing, acting as middleman with 
printers and billstickers, for the inexperienced or the 
uninspired: the dull haberdasher came to him for 
ideas, the smart theatrical agent for his local knowl- 
edge; and one and all departed with a copy of his 
pamphlet: How, When, and Where; or, the Adver- 
tiser’s Vade-Mecum. He had a tug chartered every 
Saturday afternoon and night, carried people outside 
the Heads, and there provided them with lines and 
bait for six hours’ fishing, at the rate of five dollars a 
person. I am told that some of them (doubtless adroit 
anglers) made a profit on the transaction. Occasion- 
ally he bought wrecks and condemned vessels; these 
latter (I cannot tell you how) found their way to sea 
again under aliases, and continued to stem the waves 
triumphantly enough under the colours of Bolivia or 
Nicaragua. Lastly, there was a certain agricultural 
engine, glorying in a great deal of vermilion and blue 
paint, and filling (it appeared) a “long-felt want,” in 
which his interest was something like a tenth. 

This for the face or front of his coneerns. ‘On the 
outside,” as he phrased it, he was variously and mys- 
teriously engaged. No dollar slept in his possession; 
rather he kept all simultaneously flying like a conjurer 
with oranges. My own earnings, when I began to have 
a share, he would but show me for a moment, and 
disperse again, like those illusive money gifts which are 
flashed in the eyes of childhood only to be entombed in 
the missionary-box. And he would come down radiant 


IRONS IN THE FIRE 99 


from a weekly balance-sheet, clap me on the shoulder, 
declare himself a winner by Gargantuan figures, and 
prove destitute of a quarter for a drink. 

in on earth have you done with it?” I would 
ask. 

“Into the mill again; all re-invested!” he would cry, 
with infinite delight. Investment was ever his word. 
He could not bear what he called gambling. ‘Never 
touch stocks, Loudon,” he would say; “nothing but 
legitimate business.” And yet, Heaven knows, many 
an indurated gambler might have drawn back appalled 
at the first hint of some of Pinkerton’s investments! 
One, which I succeeded in tracking home, and instance 
for a specimen, was a seventh share in the charter of a 
certain ill-starred schooner bound for Mexico, to 
smuggle weapons on the one trip, and cigars upon the 
other. The latter end of this enterprise, involving (as 
it did) shipwreck confiscation, and a lawsuit with 
the underwriters, was too painful to be dwelt upon at 
length. “It’s proved a disappointment,” was as far as 
my friend would go with me in words; but I know, 
from observation, that the fabric of his fortunes tot- 
tered. For the rest, it was only by accident I got wind 
of the transaction; for Pinkerton, after a time, was shy 
of introducing me to his arcana: the reason you are to 
hear presently. 

The office which was (or should have been) the point 
of rest for so many evolving dollars stood in the heart 
of the city: a high and spacious room, with many 
plate-glass windows. A glazed cabinet of polished red- 
wood offered to the eye a regiment of some two hun- 
dred bottles, conspicuously labelled. These were all 
charged with Pinkerton’s Thirteen Star, although from 
across the room it would have required an expert to 
distinguish them from the same number of bottles of 
Courvoisier. I used to twit my friend with this re- 
semblance, and propose a new edition of the pamphlet, 
with the title thus improved: Why Drink French 
Brandy, when we give you the same labels? The doors 


7 
100 THE WRECKER 


of the cabinet revolved all day upon their hinges; 
and if there entered any one who was a stranger to the 
merits of the brand, he departed laden with a bottle. 
When I used to protest at this extravagance, ‘“My dear 
Loudon,” Pinkerton would ery, “you don’t seem to | 
catch on to business principles! The prime cost of 
the spirit is literally nothing. I couldn’t find a cheaper 
advertisement if I tried.” Against the side post of the 
cabinet there leaned a gaudy umbrella, preserved there 
as a relic. It appears that when Pinkerton was about 
to place Thirteen Star upon the market, the rainy 
season was at hand. He lay dark, almost in penury, 
awaiting the first shower, at which, as upon a signal, © 
the main thoroughfares became dotted with his agents, 
vendors of advertisements; and the whole world of San — 
Francisco, from the business man fleeing for the ferry- — 
boat, to the lady waiting at the corner for her car, | 
sheltered itself under umbrellas with this strange de-— 
vice: Are you wet? Try Thirteen Star. “It was a | 
mammoth boom,” said Pinkerton, with a sigh of de-— 
lighted recollection. ‘There wasn’t another umbrella — 
to be seen. I stood at this window, Loudon, feasting - 
my eyes; and I declare, I felt like Vanderbilt.” And — 
it was to this neat application of the local climate that | 
he owed, not only much of the sale of Thirteen Star, 
but the whole business of his advertising agency. | 
The large desk (to resume our survey of the office) 
stood about the middle, knee-deep in stacks of hand- 
bills and posters, of Why Drink French Brandy? and 
The Advertiser's Vade-Mecum. It was flanked upon — 
the one hand by two female type-writers, who rested — 
not between the hours of nine and four, and upon the — 
other by a model of the agricultural machine. The 
walls, where they were not broken by telephone boxes — 
and a couple of photographs—one representing the 
wreck of the James L. Moody on a bold and broken 
coast, the other the Saturday tug alive with amateur 
fishers—almost disappeared under oil-paintings gaud-— 
ily framed. Many of these were relics of the Latin 












IRONS IN THE FIRE 101 


Quarter, and I must do Pinkerton the justice to say 
that none of them were bad, and some had remarkable 
merit. They went off slowly, but for handsome figures; 
and their places were progressively supplied with the 
work of local artists. These last it was one of my first 
duties to review and criticise. Some of them were 
villainous, yet all were saleable. I said so; and the 
next moment saw myself, the figure of a miserable 
renegade, bearing arms in the wrong camp. I was 
to look at pictures thenceforward, not with the eye of 
the artist, but the dealer; and I saw the stream widen 
that divided me from all I loved. 

“Now, Loudon,” Pinkerton had said, the morning 
after the lecture, “now, Loudon we can go at it shoulder 
to shoulder. This is what I have longed for: 1 wanted 
two heads and four arms; and now I have ’em. You'll 
find it’s just the same as art—all observation and 
imagination; only more movement. Just wait till you 
begin to feel the charm!” 

I might have waited long. Perhaps I lack a sense; 

for our whole existence seemed to me one dreary 
bustle, and the place we bustled in fitly to be called 
the Place of Yawning. I slept in a little den behind 
the office; Pinkerton, in the office itself, stretched on 
a patent sofa which sometimes collapsed, his slumbers 
_ still further menaced by an imminent clock with an 
alarm. Roused by this diabolical contrivance, we rose 
early, went forth early to breakfast, and returned by 
nine to what Pinkerton called work, and I distraction. 
Masses of letters must be opened, read, and answered; 
some by me at a subsidiary desk which had been in- 
troduced on the morning of my arrival; others by my 
bright-eyed friend, pacing the room like a caged lion 
as he dictated to the tinkling type-writers. Masses of 
wet proof had to be overhauled and scrawled upon with 
a blue pencil— ‘rustic”—“‘six-inch caps’’—‘‘bold spac- 
ing here’—or sometimes terms more fervid, as for 
Instance this, which I remember Pinkerton ‘to have 
_ spirited on the margin of an advertisement of Soothing 


102 THE WRECKER 


Syrup: “Throw this all down. Have you never 
printed an advertisement? I’ll be round in half an 
hour.” The ledger and sale-books, besides, we had 
always with us. Such was the backbone of our 
occupation, and tolerable enough; but the far greater 
proportion of our time was consumed by visitors, 
whole-souled, grand fellows no doubt, and as sharp as 
a needle, but to me unfortunately not diverting. Some 
were apparently half-witted, and must be talked over 
by the hour before they could reach the humblest de- 
cision, which they only left the office to return again 
(ten minutes later) and rescind. Others came with a 
vast show of hurry and despatch, but I observed it te 
be principally show. The agricultural model for in- 
stance, which was practicable, proved a kind of fly- 
paper for these busybodies. I have seen them blankly 
turn the crank of it for five minutes at a time, simulat- 
ing (to nobody’s deception) business interest: “Good 
thing this, Pinkerton? Sell much of it? Ha! Couldn’t 
use it, I suppose, as a medium of advertisement for 


my article?”—which was perhaps toilet soap. Others — 


(a still worse variety) carried us to neighbouring 
saloons to dice for cocktails and (after the cocktails 


were paid) for dollars on a corner of the counter. The © 


attraction of dice for all these people was indeed ex- 
traordinary: at a certain club, where I once dined in 
the character of “my partner, Mr. Dodd,” the dice- 
box came on the table with the wine, an artless substi- 
tute for after-dinner wit. 

Of all our visitors, I believe I preferred Emperor 
Norton; the very mention of whose name reminds me 
I am doing scanty justice to the folks of San Francisco. 
In what other city would a harmless madman who 
supposed himself emperor of the two Americas have 


been so fostered and encouraged? Where else would — 
even the people of the streets have respected the poor © 
soul’s illusion? Where else would bankers and mer- — 
submitted to his small assessments? Where else would — 


chants have received his visits, cashed his cheques, and 


-* 


: 


j 


IRONS IN THE FIRE 103 


he have been suffered to attend and address the exhibi- 
tion days of schools and colleges? Where else, in God’s 
green earth, have taken his pick of restaurants, ran- 
sacked the bill of fare, and departed scathless? They 
tell me he was even an exacting patron, threatening to 
withdraw his custom when dissatisfied; and I can be- 
lieve it, for his face wore an expression distinctly 
gastronomical. Pinkerton had received from this mon- 
arch a cabinet appointment; I have seen the brevet, 
wondering mainly at the good nature of the printer 
who had executed the forms, and I think my friend 
was at the head either of foreign affairs or education: 
it mattered, indeed, nothing, the prestation being in 
all offices identical. It was at a comparatively early 
date that I saw Jim in the exercise of his public func- 
tions. His Majesty entered the office—a portly, rather 
flabby man, with the face of a gentleman, rendered un- 
speakably pathetic and absurd by the great sabre at 
his side and the peacock’s feather in his hat. 

“T have called to remind you, Mr. Pinkerton, that 
you are somewhat in arrear of taxes,” he said, with old- 
fashioned, stately courtesy. 

“Well, Your Majesty, what is the amount?” asked 
Jim; and, when the figure was named (it was generally 
two or three dollars), paid upon the nail and offered a 
bonus in the shape of Thirteen Star. 

“T am always delighted to patronise native in- 
dustries,” said Norton the First. ‘San Francisco is 
public-spirited in what concerns its Emperor; and in- 
deed, sir, of all my domains, it is my favourite city.” 

“Come,” said I, when he was gone, “I prefer that 
customer to the lot.” 

“Tt’s really rather a distinction,” Jim admitted. “I 
think it must have been the umbrella racket that at- 
tracted him.” 

We were distinguished under the rose by the notice 
of other and greater men. There were days when Jim 
wore an air of unusual capacity and resolve, spoke 
with more brevity like one pressed for time, and took 


104 THE WRECKER 


often on his tongue such phrases as “Longhurst told 
me so this morning,” or “I had it straight from Long- 
hurst himself.” It was no wonder, I used to think, that 
Pinkerton was called to council with such Titans; for 
the creature’s quickness and resource were beyond 
praise. In the early days when he consulted me with- 
out reserve, pacing the room, projecting, ciphering, ex- 
tending hypothetical interests, trebling imaginary 
capital, his “engine” (to renew an excellent old word) 
labouring full steam ahead, I could never decide 
whether my sense of respect or entertainment were the 
stronger. But these good hours were destined to cur- 
tailment. 

“Yes, it’s smart enough,” I once observed. “But, 
Pinkerton, do you think it’s honest?” 

“You don’t think it’s honest!” he wailed. “O dear 
me, that ever. I should have heard such an expression 
on your lips!” 

At sight of his distress, I plagiarised unblushingly 
from Myner. ‘You seem to think honesty as simple 
as Blind Man’s Buff,” said I. “It’s a more delicate 
affair than that: delicate as any art.” 

“O well! at that rate!” he exclaimed, with complete 
relief. ‘That’s casuistry.” 

“T am perfectly certain of one thing: that what you 
propose is dishonest,” I returned. 

“Well, say no more about it. That’s settled,” he 
replied. 

Thus, almost at a word, my point was carried. But 
the trouble was that such differences continued to 
recur, until we began to regard each other with alarm. 
If there were one thing Pinkerton valued himself upon, 
it was his honesty; if there were one thing he clung 
to, it was my good opinion; and when both were in- 
volved, as was the case in these commercial cruces, 
the man was on the rack. My own position, if you 
consider how much I owed him, how hateful is the 
trade of fault-finder, and that yet I lived and fattened 
on these questionable operations, was perhaps equally 


IRONS IN THE FIRE 105 


distressing. If I had been more sterling or more com- 
bative, things might have gone extremely far. But, in 
truth, I was just base enough to profit by what was 
not forced on my attention, rather than seek scenes: 
Pinkerton quite cunning enough to avail himself of my 
weakness; and it was a relief to both when he began to 
involve his proceedings in a decent mystery. 

Our last dispute, which had a most unlooked-for con- 
sequence, turned on the refitting of condemned ships. 
He had bought a miserable hulk, and came, rubbing 
his hands, to inform me she was already on the slip, 
under a new name, to be repaired. When first I had 
heard of this industry, I suppose I scarcely com- 
prehended; but much discussion had sharpened my 
faculties, and now my brow became heavy. 

“I can be no party to that, Pinkerton,” said I. 

He leaped like a man shot. “What next?” he cried. 
“What ails you, anyway? You seem to me to dislike 
everything that’s profitable.” 

“This ship has been condemned by Lloyd’s agent,” 
said I. 

“But I tell you it’s a deal. The ship’s in splendid 
condition; there’s next to nothing wrong with her but 
the garboard streak and the stern-post. I tell you 
Lloyd’s is a ring like everybody else; only it’s an Eng- 
lish ring, and that’s what deceives you. If it was 
American, you would be crying it down all day. It’s 
Anglomania, common Anglomania,” he cried, with 
growing irritation. 

“T will not make money by risking men’s lives,” was 
my ultimatum. 

“Great Cesar! isn’t all speculation a risk? Isn’t the 
fairest kind of shipowning to risk men’s lives? And 
mining—how’s that for risk? And look at the elevator 
business—there’s danger, if you like! Didn't I take 
my risk when I bought her? She might have been too 
far gone; and where would I have been? Loudon,” he 
cried, “I tell you the truth: you’re too full of refine- 
_™ment for this world!” 


106 THE WRECKER 


“T condemn you out of your own lips,” I replied. 

“<The fairest kind of shipowning,’ says you. If you 
please, let us only do the fairest kind of business.” 

The shot told, the Irrepressible was silenced; and I 
profited by the chance, to pour in a broadside of 
another sort. He was all sunk in money-getting, I 
pointed out; he never dreamed of anything but dollars. 
Where were all his generous, progressive sentiments? 
Where was his culture? I asked. And where was the 
American Type? 

“It’s true, Loudon,” he cried, striding up and down 
the room, and wildly scouring at his hair. “You’re 
perfectly right. I’m becoming materialised. O, what 
a thing to have to say, what a confession to make! 
Materialised! Me! Loudon, this must go on no longer. 
You’ve been a loyal friend to me once more; give me 
your hand!—you’ve saved me again. J must do some- 
thing to rouse the spiritual side: something desperate; 
study something, something dry and tough. What 
shall it be? Theology? Algebra? What’s Algebra?” 

“Tt’s dry and tough enough,” said I, ‘a+2ab--b’.” 

“It’s stimulating, though?” he inquired. 

I told him I believed so, and that it was considered 
fortifying to Types. 

“Then, that’s the thing for me. I'll study Algebra,” 
he concluded. 

The next day, by application to one of his type- 
writing women, he got word of a young lady, one Miss 
Mamie McBride, who was willing and able to conduct 
him in these bloomless meadows; and her circum- 
stances being lean, and terms consequently moderate, 
he and Mamie were soon in agreement for two lessons 
in the week. He took fire with unexampled rapidity; 
he seemed unable to tear himself away from the 
symbolic art; an hour’s lesson occupied the whole eve- 
ning; and the original two was soon increased to four, 
and then five. I bade him beware of female blandish- 
ments. “The first thing you know, you'll be falling 
in love with the algebraist,” said I. 


IRONS IN THE FIRE 107 


“Don’t say it even in jest,” he cried. “She’s a lady 
I revere. I could no more lay a hand upon her than I 
could upon a spirit. Loudon, I don’t believe God ever 
made a purer-minded woman.” 

Which appeared to me to be too fervent to be reas- 
suring. 

Meanwhile I had been long expostulating with my 
friend upon a different matter. “I’m the fifth wheel,” 
I kept telling him. “For any use I am, I might as 
well be in Senegambia. The letters you give me to 
attend to might be answered by a sucking child. And 
I tell you what it is, Pinkerton: either you’ve got to 
find me some employment, or I’l] have to start in and 
find it for myself.” 

This I said with a corner of my eye in the usual 
quarter, towards the arts, little dreaming what destiny 
was to provide. 

“T’ve got it, Loudon,” Pinkerton at last replied. “Got 
the idea on the Potrero cars. Found I hadn’t a pencil, 
borrowed one from the conductor, and figured on it 
roughly all the way in town. I saw it was the thing 
at last; gives you a real show. All your talents and 
accomplishments come in. Here’s a sketch advertise- 
ment. Just run your eye over it. ‘Sun, Ozone, and 
Music! PINKERTON’S HEBDOMADARY PIC- 
NICS!’ (That’s a good, catching phrase, ‘hebdoma- 
dary,’ though it’s hard to say. I made a note of it 
when I was looking in the dictionary how to spell 
hectagonal. ‘Well, you’re a boss word,’ I said. ‘Be- 
fore you’re very much older, I'l] have you in type as’ 
long as yourself.’ And here it is, you see.) ‘Five 
dollars a head, and ladies free. Monster Oxio or At- 
TRACTIONS.’ (How does that strike you?) ‘Free 
luncheon under the greenwood tree. Dance on the 
elastic sward. Home again in the Bright Evening 
Hours. Manager and Honorary Steward, H. Loudon 
Dodd, Esq., the well-known connoisseur.’ ” 

Singular how a man runs from Scylla to Charybdis! 
I was so intent on securing the disappearance of a 


Wwe THE WRECKER 


single epithet that I accepted the rest of the advertise- 
ment and all that it involved without discussion. So 
it befell that the words ‘‘well-known connoisseur” were 
deleted; but that H. Loudon Dodd became manager 
and honorary steward of Pinkerton’s Hebdomadary 
Picnics, soon shortened, by popular consent, to the 
Dromedary. 

By eight o’clock, any Sunday morning, I was to be 
observed by an admiring public on the wharf. ‘The 
garb and attributes of sacrifice consisted of a black 
frock coat, rosetted, its pockets bulging with sweet- 
meats and inferior cigars, trousers of light blue, a 
silk hat lke a reflector, and a varnished wand. A 
goodly steamer guarded my one flank, panting and 
throbbing, flags fluttering fore and aft of her, illus- 
trative of the Dromedary and patriotism. My other 
flank was covered by the ticket-office, strongly held 


by a trusty character of the Scots persuasion, rosetted 
like his superior and smoking a cigar to mark the oc- 


casion festive. At half-past, having assured myself 
that all was well with the free luncheons, I lit a cigar 
myself, and awaited the strains of the “Pioneer Band.” 
I had never to wait long—they were German and 
punctual—and by a few minutes after the half-hour, lL 
would hear them booming down street with a. long mili- 
tary roll of drums, some score of gratuitous asses 
prancing at the head in bear-skin hats and buckskin 
aprons, and conspicuous with resplendent axes. The 
band, of course, we paid for; but so strong is the 
San Franciscan passion for public masquerade, that 
the asses (as I say) were all gratuitous, pranced for 
the love of it, and cost us nothing but their luncheon. 
The musicians formed up in the bows of my steamer, 
and struck into a skittish polka; the asses mounted 
guard upon the gangway and the ticket- office; and 
presently after, in family parties of father, mother, and 
children, in the form of duplicate lovers or in that of 
solitary youth, the public began to descend upon us 
by the carful at a time; four to six hundred perhaps, 


¥ 


IRONS IN THE FIRE 109 


with a strong German flavour, and all merry as chil- 
dren. When these had been shepherded on board, and 
the inevitable belated two or three had gained the deck 
amidst the cheering of the public, the hawser was cast 
off, and we plunged into the bay. 

And now behold the honorary steward in the hour of 
duty and glory: see me circulate amid the crowd, 
radiating affability and laughter, liberal with my 
sweetmeats and cigars. JI say unblushing things to 
hobbledehoy girls, tell shy young persons this is the 
married peoples’ boat, roguishly ask the abstracted if 
they are thinking of their sweethearts, offer Pater- 
familias a cigar, am struck with the beauty and grow 
curious about the age of mamma’s youngest who (I 
assure her gaily) will be a man before his mother; or 
perhaps it may occur to me, from the sensible expres: 
sion of her face, that she is a person of good counsel, 
and I ask her earnestly if she knows any particularly 
pleasant place on the Saucelito or San Rafael coast, 
for the scene of our picnic is always supposed to be 
uncertain. The next moment I am back at my giddy 
badinage with the young ladies, wakening laughter as 
I go, and leaving in my wake applausive comments of 
“Isn’t Mr. Dodd a funny gentleman?” and ‘“O, I think 
he’s just too nice!” 

An hour having passed in this airy manner, I start 
upon my rounds afresh, with a bag full of coloured 
tickets, all with pins attached, and all with legible in- 
scriptions: “Old Germany,” “California,” “True 
Love,” “Old Fogies,” “La Belle France,” “Green Erin,” 
“The Land of Cakes,” “Washington,” “Blue Jay,” 
“Robin Red-Breast,’”—twenty of each denomination; 
for when it comes to the luncheon, we sit down by 
twenties. These are distributed with anxious tact— 
for indeed this is the most delicate part of my func- 
tions—but outwardly with reckless unconcern, amidst 
the gayest flutter and confusion; and are immediately 
after sported upon hats and bonnets, to the extreme 
diffusion of cordiality, total strangers hailing each 


110 THE WRECKER 


other by “the number of their mess”’—so we humor- 
ously name it—and the deck ringing with cries of, 
“Here, all Blue Jays to the rescue!” or, “I say, am I 
alone in this blame ship? Ain’t there no more Cali- 
fornians?” 

By this time we are drawing near to the appointed 
spot. I mount upon the bridge, the observed of all 
observers. 

“Captain,” I say, in clear, emphatic tones, heard far 
and wide, “the majority of the company appear to be 
in favour of the little cove beyond One-Tree Point.” 

“All right, Mr. Dodd,” responds the captain, heart- 
ily; “all one to me. J am not exactly sure of the place 
you mean; but just you stay here and pilot me.” 

I do, pointing with my wand. I do pilot him, to the 
inexpressible entertainment of the picnic; for 1 am 
(why should I deny it?) the popular man. We slow 
down off the mouth of a grassy valley, watered by a 
brook, and set in pines and redwoods. The anchor is 
let go; the boats are lowered, two of them already 
packed w.th the materials of an impromptu bar; and 
the Pioneer Band, accompanied by the resplendent 
asses, fill the other, and move shoreward to the invit- 
ing strains of Buffalo Gals, won't you come out to- 
nght? It is part of our programme that one of the 
asses shall, from sheer clumsiness in the course of this 
embarkation, drop a dummy axe into the water: where- 
upon the mirth of the picnic can hardly be assuaged. 
Upon one occasion, the dummy axe floated, and the 
laugh turned rather the wrong way. 

In from ten to twenty minutes the boats are along- 
side again, the messes are marshalled separately on 
the deck, and the picnic goes ashore, to find the band 
and the impromptu bar awaiting them. Then come 
the hampers, which are piled upon the beach and sur- 
rounded by a stern guard of stalwart asses, axe on 
shoulder. It is here I take my place, note-book in 
hand, under a banner bearing the legend, “Come here 
for hampers.” Each hamper contains a complete © 


IRONS IN THE FIRE 111 


outfit for a separate twenty, cold provender, plates, 
glasses, knives, forks, and spoons: an agonised printed 
appeal from the fevered pen of Pinkerton, pasted on 
the inside of the lid, beseeches that care be taken of 
the glass and silver. Beer, wine, and lemonade are 
flowing already from the bar, and the various clans of 
twenty file away into the woods, with bottles under 
their arms, and the hampers strung upon a stick. Till 
one they feast there, in a very moderate seclusion, all 
being within earshot of the band. From one till four, 
dancing takes place upon the grass; the bar does a 
roaring business, and the honorary steward, who has 
already exhausted himself to bring life into the dullest 
of the messes, must now indefatigably dance with the 
plainest of the women. At four a bugle-call is sounded; 
and by half-past behold us on board again, pioneers, 
corrugated iron bar, empty bottles, and all; while the 
honorary steward, free at last, subsides into the cap- 
tain’s cabin over a brandy and soda and a book. Free 
at last, I say, yet there remains before him the frantic 
leave-takings at the pier, and a sober journey up to 
Pinkerton’s office with two policemen and the day’s 
takings in a bag. 

What I have here sketched was the routine. But 
we appealed to the taste of San Francisco more dis- 
tinctly in particular fétes. “Ye Olde Time Pycke- 
Nycke,” largely advertised in handbills beginning 
“Oyez, Oyez!” and largely frequented by knights, 
monks, and cavaliers, was drowned out by unseason- 
able rain, and returned to the city one of the saddest 
spectacles I ever remember to have witnessed. In 
pleasing contrast, and certainly our chief success, was 
“The Gathering of the Clans,” or Scottish picnic. So 
many milk-white knees were never before simultane- 
ously exhibited in public, and to judge by the prev- 
alence of “Royal Stewart” and the number of eagle’s 
feathers, we were a high-born company. I threw for- 
ward the Scottish flank of my own ancestry, and 
passed muster as a clansman with applause. There 


112 THE WRECKER 


was, indeed, but one small cloud on this red-letter day. 
I had laid in a large supply of the national beverage, 
in the shape of The Rob Roy MacGregor O’ Blend, 
Warranted Old and Vatted; and this must certainly 
have. been a generous spirit, for I had some anxious 
work between four and half-past, conveying on board 
the inanimate forms of chieftains. 

To one of our ordinary festivities, where he was the 
life and soul of his own mess, Pinkerton himself came 
incognito, bringing the algebraist on his arm. Miss 
Mamie proved to be a well-enough-looking mouse, with 
a large, limpid eye, very good manners, and a flow 
of the most correct expressions I have ever heard upon 
the human lip. As Pinkerton’s incognito was strict, I 
had little opportunity to cultivate the lady’s acquaint- 
ance; but I was informed afterwards that she con- 
sidered me “‘the wittiest gentleman she had ever met.” 
“The Lord mend your taste in wit!” thought I; but 
I cannot conceal that such was the general impression. 
One of my pleasantries even went the round in San 
Francisco, and I have heard it (myself all unknown) 
bandied in saloons. To be unknown began at last te 
be a rare experience: a bustle woke upon my passage; 
above all, in humble neighbourhoods. “‘Who’s that?” 
one would ask, and the other would cry, “That! Why, 
Dromedary Dodd!” or with withering scorn, ‘Not 
know Mr. Dodd of the Picnics? Well!” and indeed I 
think it marked a rather barren destiny; for our pic- 
nics, if a trifle vulgar, were as gay and innocent as 
the age of gold; I am sure no people divert themselves 
so easily and so well: and even with the cares of my 
stewardship, I was often happy to be there. 

Indeed, there: were but two drawbacks in the least 
considerable. The first was my terror of the hobble- 
dehoy girls, to whom (from the demands of my situa- 
tion) I was obliged to lay myself so open. The other, 
if less momentous, was more mortifying. In early 
days, at my mother’s knee, as a man may say, I had 
acquired the unenviable accomplishment (which I have 


FACES ON THE CITY FRONT 129 


Kanakas.” I thought I should have lost him soon; but 
according to the unwritten usage of mariners, he had 
first to dissipate his wages. ‘Guess I’ll have to paint 
this town red,’ was his hyperbolical expression; for 
sure no man ever embarked upon a milder course of 
dissipation, most of his days being passed in the little 
parlour behind Black Tom’s public-house, with a select 
corps of old particular acquaintances, all from the 
South Seas, and all patrons of a long yarn, a short 
pipe, and glasses round. 

Black Tom’s, to the front, presented the appearance 
of a fourth-rate saloon, devoted to Kanaka seamen, 
dirt, negro-head tobacco, bad cigars, worse gin, and 
guitars and banjos in a state of decline. The pro- 
prietor, a powerful coloured man, was at once a pub- 
lican, a ward politician, leader of some brigade of 
“lambs” or ‘“‘smashers,” at the wind of whose clubs the 
party bosses and the mayor were supposed to tremble, 
and (what hurt nothing) an active and reliable crimp. 
His front quarters, then, were noisy, disreputable, and 
not even safe. I have seen worse frequented saloons 
where there were fewer scandals; for Tom was often 
drunk himself; and there is no doubt the Lambs must 
have been a useful body, or the place would have been 
closed. J remember one day, not long before an elec- 
tion, seeing a blind man, very well dressed, led up to 
the counter and remain a long while in consultation 
with the negro. The pair looked so ill-assorted, and 
the awe with which the drinkers fell back and left 
them in the midst of an impromptu privacy was so 
unusual in such a place, that I turned to my next 
neighbour with a question. He told me the blind man 
was a distinguished party boss, called by some the 
King of San Francisco, but perhaps better known by 
his picturesque Chinese nickname of the Blind White 
Devil. ‘The Lambs must be wanted pretty bad, I 
guess,’ my informant added. I have here a sketch 


of the Blind White Devil leaning on the counter; on 


n 
* 
‘ 


a 


the next page, and taken the same hour, a jotting of 


130 THE WRECKER 


Black Tom threatening a whole crowd of customers 
with a long Smith and Wesson: to such heights and 
depths we rose and fell in the front parts of the saloon. 

Meanwhile, away in the back quarters, sat the small 
informal South Sea Club, talking of another world and 
surely of a different century. Old schooner captains 
they were, old South Sea traders, cooks, and mates: 
fine creatures, softened by residence among a softer 
race: full men besides, though not by reading, but 
by strange experience; and for days together I could 
hear their yarns with an unfading pleasure. All had 
indeed some touch of the poetic; for the beach-comber, 
when not a mere ruffian, is the poor relation of the 
artist. Even through Johnson’s inarticulate speech, 
his “O yes, there ain’t no harm in them Kanakas,” 
or “O yes, that’s a son of a gun of a fine island, moun- 
tainous right down; I didn’t never ought to have left 
that island,” there pierced a certain gusto of apprecia- 
tion: and some of the rest were master-talkers. From 
their long tales, their traits of character and unpre- 
meditated landscape, there began to piece itself to- 
gether in my head some image of the islands and the 
island life: precipitous shores, spired mountain tops, 
_ the deep shade of hanging forests, the unresting surf 
upon the reef, and the unending peace of the lagoon; 
sun, moon, and stars of an imperial brightness; man 
moving in these scenes scarce fallen, and woman 
lovelier than Eve; the primal curse abrogated, the bed 
made ready for the stranger, life set to perpetual 
music, and the guest welcomed, the boat urged, and the 
long night beguiled, with poetry and choral song. A 
man must have been an unsuccessful artist; he must 
have starved on the streets of Paris; he must have 
been yoked to a commercial force like Pinkerton, be- 
fore he can conceive the longings that at times assailed 
me. The draughty, rowdy city of San Francisco, the 
bustling office where my friend Jim paced like a caged 


lion daily between ten and four, even (at times) the — 
retrospect of Paris, faded in comparison. Many a man — 


|! 


FACES ON THE CITY FRONT 131 


less tempted would have thrown up all to realise his 
visions; but it was by nature unadventurous and un- 
initiative: to divert me from all former paths and send 
me cruising through the isles of paradise, some force 
external to myself must be exerted; Destiny herself 
must use the fitting wedge; and little as I deemed it, 
that tool was already in her hand of brass. 

I sat, one afternoon, in the corner of a great, glassy, 
silvered saloon, a free lunch at my one elbow, at the 
other a “conscientious nude” from the brush of local 
talent; when, with the tramp of feet and a sudden buzz 
of voices, the swing-doors were flung broadly open and 
the place carried as by storm. The crowd which thus 
entered (mostly seafaring men, and all prodigiously 
excited) contained a sort of kernel or general centre 
of interest, which the rest merely surrounded and ad- 
vertised, as children in the Old World surround and 
escort the Punch-and-Judy man; and word went round 
the bar. like wildfire, that these were Captain Trent 
and the survivors of the British brig Flying Scud, 
picked up by a British war-ship on Midway Island, 
arrived that morning in San Francisco Bay, and now 
fresh from making the necessary declarations. Pres- 
ently I had a good sight of them: four brown, seaman- 
like fellows, standing by the counter, glass in hand, the © 
centre of a score of questioners. One was a Kanaka— 
the cook, I was informed; one carried a cage with a 
canary, which occasionally trilled into thin song; one 
had his left arm in a sling and looked gentleman-like, 
and somewhat sickly, as though the injury had been 
severe and he was scarce recovered; and the captain 
himself—a red-faced, blue-eyed, thick-set man of five 
and forty—wore a bandage on his right hand. The 
incident struck me; I was struck particularly to see 
captain, cook, and foremast hands walking the street 
and visiting saloons in company; and, as when any- 
thing impressed me, I got my sketch-book out, and 
began to steal a sketch of the four castaways. The 
crowd, sympathising with my design, made a clear lane 


132 THE WRECKER -— 
across the room; and I was thus enabled, all unob- 


served myself, to observe with a still-growing close-— 


ness the face and the demeanour of Captain Trent. 

Warmed by whisky and encouraged by the eagerness 
of the bystanders, that gentleman was now rehearsing 
the history of his misfortune. It was but scraps that 
reached me: how he “filled her on the starboard tack,” 
and how “it came up sudden out of the nor’nor’west,” 
and “there she was, high and dry.” Sometimes he 
would appeal to one of the men—‘That was how it 
was, Jack?”—and the man would reply, “That was 
the way of it, Captain Trent.” Lastly, he started a 
fresh tide of popular sympathy by enunciating the 
sentiment, “Damn all these Admiralty Charts, and 
that’s what I say!” From the nodding of heads and 
the murmurs of assent that followed, I could see that 
Captain Trent had established himself in the public 
mind as a gentleman and a thorough navigator: about 
which period, my sketch of the four men and the 
canary bird being finished, and all (especially the 
canary bird) excellent likenesses, I buckled up my 
book, and slipped from the saloon. 

Little did I suppose that I was leaving Act I, Scene 
I, of the drama of my life; and yet the scene, or rather 
the captain’s face, lingered for some time in my 
memory. I was no prophet, as I say; but I was some- 
thing else: I was an observer; and one thing I knew, 
I knew when a man was terrified. Captain Trent, of 
the British brig Flying Scud, had been glib: he had 
been ready; he had been loud; but in his blue eyes I 
could detect the chill, and in the lines of his counte- 


nance spy the agitation of perpetual terror. Was he ~ 


trembling for his certificate? In my judgment it was 
some livelier kind of fear that thrilled in the man’s 
marrow as he turned to drink. Was it the result of 
recent shock, and had he not yet recovered the disaster 


to his brig? I remembered how a friend of mine had — 
been in a railway accident, and shook and started for 





FACES ON THE CITY FRONT 133 


a month; and although Captain Trent of the Flying 
Scud had none of the appearance of a nervous man, I 
told myself, with incomplete conviction, that his must 
be a similar case 


CHAPTER IX 
THE WRECK OF THE “FLYING SCUD” 


HE next morning I found Pinkerton, who had 

risen before me, seated at our usual table, and 
deep in the perusal of what I will call the Daily Oc- 
cidental. This was a paper (I know not if it be so 
still) that stood out alone among its brethren in the 
West; the others, down to their smallest item, were 
defaced with capitals, head lines, alliterations, swag- 
gering misquotations, and the shoddy, picturesque, and 
unpathetic pathos of the Harry Millers: the Occidental 
alone appeared to be written by a dull, sane, Christian 
gentleman, singly desirous of communicating knowl- 
edge. It had not only this merit, which endeared it 
to me, but was admittedly the best informed on busi- 
ness matters, which attracted Pinkerton. 

“Loudon,” said he, looking up from the journal, “you 
sometimes think I have too many irons in the fire. My 
notion, on the other hand, is, when you see a dollar 
lying, pick it up! Well, here I’ve tumbled over a whole 
pile of ’em on a reef in the middle of the Pacific.” 

“Why, Jim, you miserable fellow!” I exclaimed; 
“haven’t we Depew City, one of God’s green centres 
for this State? haven’t we a 

“Just listen to this,” interrupted Jim. “It’s mis- 
erable copy; these Occidental reporter fellows have no 
fire; but the facts are right enough, I guess.” And 
he began to read: — 





“WRECK OF THE BritisH Brig ‘FLyine Scwp.’ 


“H.B.M.S. Tempest, which arrived yesterday at this — 
port, brings Captain Trent and four men of the British | 
brig Flying Scud, cast away February 12th on Midway — 


134 


§ 


THE WRECK OF THE “FLYING SCUD” 135 


Island, and most providentially rescued the next day. 
The Flying Scud was of 200 tons burthen, owned in 
London, and has been out nearly two years tramping. 
Captain Trent left Hong Kong December 8th, bound 
for this port in rice and a small mixed cargo of silks, 
teas, and China notions, the whole valued at $10,000, 
fully covered by insurance. The log shows plenty of 
fine weather, with light airs, calms, and squalls. In 
lat. 28 N., long. 177 W., his water going rotten, and 
misled by Hoyt’s North Pacific Directory, which in- 
formed him there was a coaling station on the island, 
Captain Trent put in to Midway Island. He found 
it a literal sandbank, surrounded by a coral reef 
mostly submerged. Birds were very plenty, there was 
good fish in the lagoon, but no firewood; and the water, 
which could be obtained by digging, brackish. He 
found good holding-ground off the north end of the 
larger bank in fifteen fathoms water; bottom sandy, 
with coral patches. Here he was detained seven days 
by a calm, the crew suffering severely from the water, 
which was gone quite bad; and it was only on the eve- 
ning of the 12th, that a little wind sprang up, coming 
puffy out of N.N.E. Late as it was, Captain Trent 
immediately weighed anchor and attempted to get out. 
While the vessel was beating up to the passage, the 
wind took a sudden lull and then veered squally into 
N., and even N.N.W., driving the brig ashore on the 
sand at about twenty minutes before six o’clock. John 
Wallen, a native of Finland, and Charles Holdorsen, 
a native of Sweden, were drowned alongside, in at- 
tempting to lower a boat, neither being able to swim, 
the squall very dark, and the noise of the breakers 
drowning everything. At the same time John Brown, 
another of the crew, had his arm broken by the falls. 
Captain Trent further informed the OccmrntTAtL re- 
porter, that the brig struck heavily at first bows on, 
he supposes upon coral; that she then drove over the 
obstacle, and now lies in sand, much down by the head 
and with a list to starboard. In the first collision she 


136 THE WRECKER 


must have sustained some damage, as she was making 
water forward. The rice will probably be all de- 
stroyed: but the more valuable part of the cargo is 
fortunately in the afterhold. Captain Trent was pre- 
paring his long-boat for sea, when the providential 
arrival of the Tempest pursuant to Admiralty orders 
to call at islands in her course for castaways, saved 
the gallant captain from all further danger. It is 
searcely necessary to add that both the officers and 
men of the unfortunate vessel speak in high terms of 
the kindness they received on board the man-of-war. 
We print a list of the survivors: Jacob Trent, master, 
of Hull, England; Elias Goddedaal, mate, native of 
Christiansand, Sweden; Ah Wing, cook, native of Sana, 
China; John Brown, native of Glasgow, Scotland; John 
Hardy, native of London, England. The Flying Scud 
is ten years old, and this morning will be sold as she 
stands, by order of Lloyd’s agent, at public auction for 
the benefit of the underwriters. The auction will take 
place in the Merchants’ Exchange at ten o’clock. 

“Further Particulars—Later in the afternoon the 
OccIDENTAL reporter found Lieutenant Sebright, first 
officer of H.B.M.S. Tempest, at the Palace Hotel. The 
gallant officer was somewhat pressed for time, but con- 
firmed the account given by Captain Trent in all par- 
ticulars. He added that the Flying Scud is in an 
excellent berth, and except in the highly improbable 
event of a heavy N.W. gale, might last until next 
winter.” 


“You will never know anything of literature,” said 
I, when Jim had finished. “That is a good, honest, 
plain piece of work, and tells the story clearly. I see 
only one mistake: the cook is not a Chinaman; he is 
a Kanaka, and, I think, a Hawaiian.” 

“Why, how do you know that?” asked Jim. 

“I saw the whole gang yesterday in a saloon,” said 
I. “I even heard the tale, or might have heard it, 


THE WRECK OF THE “FLYING SCUD” 137 


from Captain Trent himself, who struck me as thirsty 
and nervous.” 

“Well, that’s neither here nor there,” cried Pinkerton. 
“The point is, how about these dollars lying on a 
reef?” 

“Will it pay?” I asked. 

“Pay like a sugar trust!” exclaimed Pinkerton. 
“Don’t you see what this British officer says about the 
safety? Don’t you see the cargo’s valued at ten thou- 
sand? Schooners are begging just now; I can get my 
pick of them at two hundred and fifty a month; and 
how does that foot up? It looks lke three hundred 
per cent. to me.” 

“You forget,” I objected, “the captain himself de- 
clares the rice is damaged.” 

“That’s a point, I know,” admitted Jim. “But the 
rice is the sluggish article, anyway; it’s little more 
account than ballast; it’s the tea and silks that I look 
to: all we have to find is the proportion, and one look 
at the manifest will settle that. I’ve rung up Lloyd’s 
on purpose; the captain is to meet me there in an hour, 
and then I’ll be posted on that brig as if I built her. 
Besides, you’ve no idea what pickings there are about 
a wreck—copper, lead, rigging, anchors, chains, even 
the crockery, Loudon!” 

“You seem to me to forget one trifle,” said I.  “Be- 
fore you pick that wreck, you’ve got to buy her, and 
how much will she cost?” 

“One hundred dollars,’ replied Jim, with the 
promptitude of an automaton. 

“How on earth do you guess that?” I cried. 

“T don’t guess; I know it,” answered the Commercial 
Force. “My dear boy, I may be a galoot about lit- 
erature, but you’ll always be an outsider in business. 
How do you suppose I bought the James L. Moody for 
two hundred and fifty, her boats alone worth four times 
the money? Because my name stood first in‘the list. 
Well, it stands there again; I have the naming of the 
figure, and I name a small one because of the distance: 


138 THE WRECKER 


but it wouldn’t matter what I named; that would be 
the price.” | 

“Tt sounds mysterious enough,” said I. “Is this 
public auction conducted in a subterranean vault? 
Could a plain citizen—myself, for instance—come and 
see?” 

“O, everything’s open and above board,” he cried 
indignantly. “Anybody can come, only nobody bids 
against us, and if he did, he would get frozen out. It’s 
been tried before now, and once was enough. We hold 
the plant; we’ve got the connection; we can afford to 
go higher than any outsider; there’s two million dollars 
in the ring; and we stick at nothing. Or suppose any- 
body did buy over our head—I tell you, Loudon, he 
would think this town gone crazy; he could no more 
get business through on the city front than I can 
dance, schooners, divers, men—all he wanted—the 
prices would fly right up and strike him.” 

“But how did you get in?” I asked. “You were once 
an outsider like your neighbors, I suppose?” 

“T took hold of that thing, Loudon, and just studied 
it up,” he replied. “It took my fancy; it was so ro- 
mantic, and then I saw there was boodle in the thing; 
and I figured on the business till no man alive could 
give me points. Nobody knew I had an eye on wrecks 
till one fine morning I dropped in upon Douglas B. 
Longhurst in his den, gave him all the facts and figures, 
and put it to him straight: “Do you want me in this 
ring? or shall I start another?’ He took half an hour, 
and when I came back, ‘Pink,’ says he, ‘I’ve put your 
name on.’ The first time I came to the top, it was 
that Moody racket; now it’s the Flying Scud.” 

Whereupon Pinkerton, looking at his watch, uttered 
an exclamation, made a hasty appointment with myself 
for the doors of the Merchants’ Exchange, and fled to 
examine manifests and interview the skipper. I 
finished my cigarette with the deliberation of a man at 
the end of many picnics; reflecting to myself that of 
all forms of the dollar-hunt, this wrecking had by far 


THE WRECK OF THE “FLYING SCUD” 139 


the most address to my imagination. Even as I went 
down town, in the brisk bustle and chill of the familiar 
San Francisco thoroughfares, I was haunted by a vision 
of the wreck, baking so far away in the strong sun, 
under a cloud of sea-birds; and even then, and for no 
better reason, my heart inclined towards the adventure. 
If not myself, something that was mine, some one at 
least in my employment should voyage to that ocean- 
bounded pin-point and descend to that deserted cabin. 

Pinkerton met me at the appointed moment, pinched 
of lip and more than usually erect of bearing, like one 
conscious of great resolves. 

“Well?” I asked. 

“Well,” said he, “it might be better, and it might be 
worse. This Captain Trent is a remarkably honest 
fellow—one out of a thousand. As soon as he knew 
I was in the market, he owned up about the rice in 
so many words. By his calculation, if there’s thirty 
mats of it saved, it’s an outside figure. However, the 
manifest was cheerier. There’s about five thousand 
dollars of the whole value in silks and teas and nut- 
oils and that, all in the lazarette, and as safe as if 
it was in Kearney Street. The brig was new coppered 
a year ago. There’s upwards of a hundred and fifty 
fathom away-up chain. It’s not a bonanza, but there’s 
boodle in it; and we’ll try it on.’ 

It was by that time hard on ten o'clock, and we 
turned at once into the place of sale. The Flying Scud, 
although so important to ourselves, appeared to attract 
a very humble share of popular attention. The auc- 
tioneer was surrounded by perhaps a_ score of 
lookers-on, big fellows, for the most part, of the true 
Western build, long in the leg, broad in the shoulder, 
and adorned (to a plain man’s taste) with needless 
finery. A jaunty, ostentatious comradeship prevailed. 
Bets were flying, and nicknames. “The boys” (as they 
would have called themselves) were very boyish; and 
it was plain they were here in mirth, and not on ‘busi- 
ness. Behind, and certainly in strong contrast to these 


140 ~ THE WRECKER 


gentlemen, I could detect the figure of my friend 
Captain Trent, come (as I could very well imagine 
that a captain would) to hear the last of his old vessel. 
Since yesterday, he had rigged himself anew in ready- 
made black clothes, not very aptly fitted; the upper 
left-hand pocket showing a corner of silk handkerchief, 
the lower, on the other side, -bulging with papers. 
Pinkerton had just given this man a high character. 
Certainly he seemed to have been very frank, and I 
looked at him again to trace (if possible) that virtue 
in his face. It was red and broad and flustered and 
(I thought) false. The whole man looked sick with 
some unknown anxiety; and as he stood there, un- 
conscious of my observation, he tore at his nails, 
scowled on the floor, or glanced suddenly, sharply, and 
fearfully at passers-by. I was still gazing at the man 
in a kind of fascination, when the: sale began. 

Some preliminaries were rattled through, to the ir- 
reverent, uninterrupted gambolling of the boys; and 
then, amid a trifle more attention, the auctioneer 
sounded for some two or three minutes the pipe of the 
charmer. Fine brig—new. copper—valuable fittings— 
three fine boats—remarkably choice cargo—what the 
auctioneer would call a perfectly safe investment; nay, 
gentlemen, he would go further, he would put a figure 
on it: he had no hesitation (had that bold auctioneer) 
in putting it in figures; and in his view, what with this 
and that, and one thing and another, the purchaser 
might expect to clear a sum equal to the entire esti- 
mated value of the cargo; or, gentlemen, in other words 
a sum of ten thousand dollars. At this modest compu- 
tation the roof immediately above the speaker’s head 
(I suppose, through the intervention of a spectator 
of ventriloquial tastes) uttered a clear “Cock-a-doodle- 
doo!’ whereat all laughed, the auctioneer himself 
obligingly joining. 

“Now, gentlemen, what shall we say,” resumed that 
gentleman, plainly ogling Pinkerton,—‘what shall we 
say for this remarkable opportunity ?” 


THE WRECK OF THE “FLYING SCUD” 141 


“One hundred dollars,” said Pinkerton. 

“One hundred dollars from Mr. Pinkerton,” went the 
auctioneer, “one hundred dollars. No other gentleman 
inclined to make any advance? One hundred dollars, 
only one hundred dollars ie 

The auctioneer was droning on to some such tune as 
this, and I, on my part, was watching with something 
between sympathy and amazement the undisguised 
emotion of Captain Trent, when we were all startled 
by the interjection of a bid. 

“And fifty,” said a sharp voice. 

Pinkerton, the auctioneer, and the boys, who were 
all equally in the open secret of the ring, were now all 
equally and simultaneously taken aback. 
me f beg your pardon,” said the auctioneer. ‘Anybody 

id?’ 

“And fifty,’ reiterated the voice, which I was now 
able to trace to its origin, on the lips of a small, un- 
seemly rag of human-kind. The speaker’s skin was 
grey and blotched; he spoke in a kind of broken song, 
with much variety of key; his gestures seemed (as in 
the disease called St. Vitus’s dance) to be imperfectly 
under control; he was badly dressed; he carried himself 
with an air of shrinking assumption, as though he were 
proud to be where he was and to do what he was doing, 
and yet half expected to be called in question and 
kicked out. I think I never saw a man more of a piece; 
and the type was new to me; I had never before set 
eyes upon his parallel, and I thought instinctively of 
Balzac and the lower regions of the Comédie Humaine. 

Pinkerton stared a moment on the intruder with no 
friendly eye, tore a leaf from his note-book, and 
scribbled a line in pencil, turned, beckoned a messenger 
boy, and whispered ‘To Longhurst.” Next moment, the 
boy had sped upon his errand, and Pinkerton was again 
facing the auctioneer. 

“Two hundred dollars,” said Jim. 

“And fifty,” said the enemy. 

“This looks lively,’ whispered I to Pinkerton. 


142 -. THE WRECKER 


“Yes; the little beast means cold-drawn biz,” re- 
turned my friend. ‘Well, he’ll have a lesson. Wait till 
I see Longhurst. Three hundred,’ he added aloud. 

“And fifty,’ came the echo. 

It was about this moment when my eye fell again on 
Captain Trent. A deeper shade had mounted to his 
crimson face: the new coat was unbuttoned and all 
flying open; the new silk handkerchief in busy requi- 
sition; and the man’s eye, of a clear sailor blue, shone 
glassy with excitement. He was anxiously still, but 
now (if I could read a face) there was hope in his 
anxiety. 

“Jim,” I whispered, “look at Trent. Bet you what 
you please, he was expecting this.” 

“Yes,” was the reply, “there’s some blame’ thing 
going on here.” And he renewed his bid. 

The figure had run up into the neighbourhood of a 
thousand when I was aware of a sensation in the faces 
opposite, and, looking over my shoulder, saw a very 
large, bland, handsome man come strolling forth and 
make a little signal to the auctioneer. 

“One word, Mr. Borden,” said he; and then to Jim, 
“Well, Pink, where are we up to now?” 

Pinkerton gave him the figure. “I ran up to that on 
my own responsibility, Mr. Longhurst,” he added, with 
a flush. “I thought it the square thing.” 

“And so it was,” said Mr. Longhurst, patting him 
kindly on the shoulder, like a gratified uncle. ‘Well, 
you can drop out now; we take hold ourselves. You 
can run it up to five thousand; and if he lkes to go 
beyond that, he’s welcome to the bargain.”’ 

“By the by, who is he?” asked Pinkerton. ‘He looks 
away down.” 

“T’ve sent Billy to find out.” And at the very mo- 
ment Mr. Longhurst received from the hands of one 
of the expensive young gentlemen a folded paper. It 
was passed round from one to another till it came to 
me,andlread: “Harry D. Bellairs, Attorney-at-Law; 
defended Clara Varden; twice nearly disbarred.” 


THE WRECK OF THE “FLYING SCUD” 143 


“Well, that gets me!” observed Mr. Longhurst. 
“Who can have put up a shyster* like that? Nobody 
with money, that’s a sure thing. Suppose you tried a 
big bluff? I think I would, Pink. Well, ta-ta! Your 
partner, Mr. Dodd? Happy to have the pleasure of 
hci acquaintance, sir.” And the great man with- 

rew. 

“Well, what do you think of Douglas B.?” whispered 
Pinkerton, looking reverently after him as he departed. 
“Six foot of perfect gentleman and culture to his 
boots.” 

During this interview the auction had stood trans- 
parently arrested, the auctioneer, the spectators, and 
even Bellairs, all well aware that Mr. Longhurst was 
the principal, and Jim but a speaking-trumpet. But 
now that the Olympian Jupiter was gone, Mr. Borden 
thought proper to affect severity. 

“Come, come, Mr. Pinkerton. Any advance?” he 
snapped. 

And Pinkerton, resolved on the big bluff, replied, 
“Two thousand dollars.” 

Bellairs preserved his composure. “And fifty,” said 
he. But there was a stir among the onlookers, and 
what was of more importance, Captain Trent had 
turned pale and visibly gulped. 

“Pitch it in again, Jim,” said I. “Trent is weaken- 
ing.” 

“Three thousand,” said Jim. 

“And fifty,” said Bellairs. 

And then the bidding returned to its original move- 
ment by hundreds and fifties; but I had been able in 
the meantime to draw two conclusions. In the first 
place, Bellairs had made his last advance with a smile 
of gratified vanity; and I could see the creature was 
glorying in the kudos of an unusual position and secure 
of ultimate success. In the second, Trent had once 
more changed colour at the thousand leap, and his 


*A low lawyer. 


144 THE WRECKER 


relief, when he heard the answering fifty, was manifest 
and unaffected. Here then was a problem: both were 
presumably in the same interest, yet the one was not 
in the confidence of the other. Nor was this all. A 
few bids later it chanced that my eye encountered that 
of Captain Trent, and his, which glittered with excite- 
ment, was instantly, and I thought guiltily, withdrawn. 
He wished, then, to conceal his interest? As Jim had 
said, there was some blamed thing going on. And for 
certain, here were these two men, so strangely united, 
so strangely divided, both sharp-set to keep the wreck 
from us, and that at an exorbitant figure. 

Was the wreck worth more than we supposed? A 
sudden heat was kindled in my brain; the bids were 
nearing Longhurst’s limit of five thousand; another 
minute, and all would be too late. Tearing a leaf from 
my sketch-book, and inspired (I suppose) by vanity in 
my own powers of inference and observation, I took 
the one mad decision of my life. “Jf you care to go 
ahead,” I wrote, “I’m in for all ’'m worth.” 

Jim read, and looked round at me like one be- 
wildered; then his eyes lightened, and, turning again to 
the auctioneer, he bid, “Five thousand one hundred 
dollars.” 

“And fifty,’ said monotonous Bellairs. 

Presently Pinkerton scribbled, “What can it be?” 
and I answered, still on paper: “I can’t imagine; but 
there’s something. Watch Bellairs; hell go up to the 
ten thousand; see if he don’t.” 

And he did, and we followed. Long before this, word 
had gone abroad that there was battle royal: we were 
surrounded by a crowd that looked on wondering; 
and when Pinkerton had offered ten thousand dollars 
(the outside value of the cargo, even were it safe in 
San Francisco Bay), and Bellairs, smirking from ear 
to ear to be the centre of so much attention, had jerked 
out his answering, ‘‘And fifty,” wonder deepened to 
excitement. —. 

“Ten thousand one hundred,” said Jim; and even 


THE WRECK OF THE “FLYING SCUD” 145 


as he spoke, he made a sudden gesture with his hand, 
his face changed, and I could see that he had guessed, 
or thought that he had guessed, the mystery. As he 
scrawled another memorandum in his note-book, his 
hand shook like a telegraph-operator’s. 

“Chinese ship,’ ran the legend; and then, in big, 
tremulous half-text, and with a flourish that overran 
the margin, “Opium!” 

To be sure! thought I: this must be the secret. I 
knew that scarce a ship came in from any Chinese 
port, but she carried somewhere, behind a bulkhead, 
or in some cunning hollow of the beams, a nest of the 
valuable poison. Doubtless there was some such 
treasure on the Flying Scud. How much was it worth? 
We knew not, we were gambling in the dark; but Trent 
knew, and Bellairs; and we could only watch and 
judge. 

By this time neither Pinkerton nor I were of sound 
mind. Pinkerton was beside himself, his eyes lke 
lamps. I shook in every member. To any stranger 
entering (say) in the course of the fifteenth thousand, 
we should probably have cut a poorer figure than Bel- 
lairs himself. But we did not pause; and the crowd 
watched us, now in silence,, now with a buzz of 
whispers. 

Seventeen thousand had been reached, when Douglas 
B. Longhurst, forcing his way into the opposite row 
of faces, conspicuously and repeatedly shook his head 
at Jim. Jim’s answer was a note of two words: “My 
racket!’ which, when the great man had perused, he 
shook his finger warningly, and departed, I thought, 
with a sorrowful countenance. 

Although Mr. Longhurst knew nothing of Bellairs, 
the shady lawyer knew all about the Wrecker Boss. 
He had seen him enter the ring with manifest expec- 
tation; he saw him depart and the bids continue, with 
manifest surprise and disappointment. “Hullo!” he 
plainly thought, “this is not the ring I’m fighting, 
then?” And he determined to put on a spurt. 


146 THE WRECKER 


“Eighteen thousand,” said he. : 

“And fifty,” said Jim, taking a leaf out of his adver- 
sary’s book. 

“Twenty thousand,” from Bellairs. 

“And fifty,” from Jim, with a little nervous titter. 

And with one consent they returned to the old pace, 
only now it was Bellairs who took the hundreds, and 
Jim who did the fifty business. But by this time our 
idea had gone abroad. I could hear the word “opium” 
pass from mouth to mouth; and by the looks directed 
at us, I could see we were supposed to have some 
private information. And here an incident occurred 
highly typical of San Francisco. Close at my back 
there had stood for some time a stout, middle-aged 
gentleman, with pleasant eyes, hair pleasantly grizzled, 
and a ruddy, pleasing face. All of a sudden, he ap- 
peared as a third competitor, skied the Flying Scud 
with four fat bids of a thousand dollars each, and 
then as suddenly fled the field, remaining thenceforth 
(as before) a silent, interested spectator. 

Ever since Mr. Longhurst’s useless intervention, 
Bellairs had seemed uneasy; and at this new attack, he 
began (in his turn) to scribble a note between the bids. 
I imagined naturally enough that it would go to Cap- 
tain Trent; but when it was done, and the writer 
turned and looked behind him in the crowd, to my 
unspeakable amazement, he did not seem to remark 
the captain’s presence. 

‘Messenger boy, messenger boy!” I heard him say. 
“Somebody call me a messenger boy.” 

At last somebody did, but it was not the captain. 

“He’s sending for instructions,” 1 wrote to Pinkerton. 

“For money,’ he wrote back. ‘Shall I strike out? 
I think this ts the time.” 

I nodded. 

“Thirty thousand,” said Pinkerton, making a leap 
of close upon three thousand dollars. 

I could see doubt in Bellairs’s eye; then, sudden 
resolution. ‘Thirty-five thousand,” said he. 


THE WRECK OF THE’ “FLYING SCUD” 147 


“Forty thousand,” said Pinkerton. 

There was a long pause, during which Bellairs’s 
countenance was as a book; and then, not much too 
soon for the impending hammer, ‘‘Forty thousand and 
five dollars,” said he. 

Pinkerton and I exchanged eloquent glances. We 
were of one mind. Bellairs had tried a bluff; now he 
perceived his mistake, and was bidding against time; 
he was trying to spin out the sale until the messenger 
boy returned. 

“Forty-five thousand dollars,” said Pinkerton: his 
voice was like a ghost’s and tottered with emotion. 

“Forty-five thousand and five dollars,” said Bellairs. 

“Fifty thousand,” said Pinkerton. 

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Pinkerton. Did I hear you 
make an advance, sir?” asked the auctioneer. 

“I—I have difficulty in speaking,” gasped Jim. 
“It’s fifty thousand, Mr. Borden.” 

Bellairs was on his feet in a moment. ‘Auctioneer,” 
he said, “I have to beg the favour of three moments 
at the telephone. In this matter, I am acting on behalf 
of a certain party to whom I have just written z 

“T have nothing to do with any of this,’ said the 
ructioneer, brutally. “I am here to sell this wreck. 
Do you make any advance on fifty thousand?” 

“T have the honour to explain to you, sir,” returned 
Bellairs, with a miserable assumption of dignity. 
“Fifty thousand was the figure named by my principal; 
but if you will give me the small favour of two mo- 
ments at the telephone Z 

“QO, nonsense!” said the auctioneer. “If you make 
no advance, I’ll knock it down to Mr. Pinkerton.” 

“T warn you,” cried the attorney, with sudden shrill- 
ness. “Have a care what you’re about. You are here 
to sell for the underwriters, let me tell you—not.to act 
for Mr. Douglas Longhurst. This sale has been al- 
ready disgracefully interrupted to allow that person to 
hold a consultation with his minions. It has been much 
commented on.”’ 








148 THE WRECKER 


“There was no complaint at the time,” said the 
auctioneer, manifestly discountenanced. “You should 
have complained at the time.” 

“T am not here to conduct this sale,” replied Bellairs; 
“T am not paid for that.” 

“Well, I am, you see,” retorted the auctioneer, his 
impudence quite restored; and he resumed his sing- 
song. “Any advance on fifty thousand dollars? No 
advance on fifty thousand? No advance, gentlemen? 
Going at fifty thousand, the wreck of the brig Flying 
Scud—going—going—gone!”’ 

“My God, Jim, can we pay the money?” I cried, as 
the stroke of the hammer seemed to recall me from a 
dream. 

“It’s got to be raised,” said he, white as a sheet. 
“Tt’ll be a hell of a strain, Loudon. The credit’s good 
for it, I think; but I shall have to get around. Write 
me a cheque for your stuff. Meet you at the Occidental 
In an hour.” 

I wrote my cheque at a desk, and I declare I could 
never have recognised my signature. Jim was gone in 
a moment; Trent had vanished even earlier; only 
Bellairs remained exchanging insults with the auc- 
tioneer; and behold! as I pushed my way out of the 
exchange, who should run full tilt into my arms but 
the messenger boy? 

It was by so near a margin that we became the 
owners of the Flying Scud. 


CHAPTER X 
IN WHICH THE CREW VANISH 


T the door of the exchange, I found myself along- 

side the short, middle-aged gentleman who had 
made an appearance, so vigorous and so brief, in the 
great battle. 

“Congratulate you, Mr. Dodd,” he said. “You and 
your friend stuck to your guns nobly.” 

“No thanks to you, sir,” I replied, “running us up a 
thousand at a time, and tempting all the speculators 
in San Francisco to come and have a try.” 

“QO, that was temporary insanity,” said he; ‘and 
I thank the higher powers I am still a freeman. Walk- 
ing this way, Mr. Dodd? Jl walk along with you. 
It’s pleasant for an old fogy lke myself to see the 
young bloods in the ring; I’ve done some pretty wild 
gambles in my time in this very city, when it was a 
smaller place and I was a younger man. Yes, I know 
you, Mr. Dodd. By sight, I may say I know you ex- 
tremely well, you and your followers, the fellows 
in the kilts, eh? Pardon me. But I have the misfor- 
tune to own a little box on the Saucelito shore. Tl 
be. glad to see you there any Sunday—without the 
fellows in kilts, you know; and I can give you a bottle 
of wine, and show you the best collection of Arctic 
voyages in the States. Morgan is my name—Judge 
Morgan—a Welshman and a forty-niner.” 

“C), if youre a pioneer,” cried I, “‘come to me, and 
L’ll provide you with an axe.” 

_ “You'll want your axes for yourself, I fancy,” he 

returned, with one of his quick looks. ‘Unless you 

have private knowledge, there will be a good deal of 
149 


150 THE WRECKER 


rather violent wrecking to do before you find that— 
opium, do you call it?” 

“Well, it’s either opium, or we are stark, staring 
mad,” I replied. ‘But I assure you we have no private 
information. We went in (as I suppose you did your- 
self) on observation.” 

“An observer, sir?” inquired the judge. 

“T may say it is my trade—or, rather, was,” said I. 

“Well, now, and what did you think of Bellairs?” 
he asked. 

“Very little indeed,” said I. 

“T may tell you,” continued the judge, “that to me, 
the employment of a fellow like that appears inex- 
plicable. I knew him; he knows me too; he has often 
heard from me in court; and I assure you the man 
is utterly blown upon; it is not safe to trust him with 
a dollar; and here we find him dealing up to fiity 
thousand. I can’t think who can have so trusted him, 
but I am very sure it was a stranger in San Francisco.” 

“Some one for the owners, I suppose,” said I. 

“Surely not!” exclaimed the judge. “Owners in 
London can have nothing to say-to opium smuggled 
between Hong Kong and San Francisco. I should 
rather fancy they would be the last to hear of. it— 
until the ship was seized. No; I was thinking of the 
captain. But where would he get the money? above 
all, after having laid out so much to buy the stuff in 
China. Unless, indeed, he were acting for some one 
in ’Frisco; and in that case—here we go round again 
in the vicious circle—Bellairs would not have been 
employed.” 

“T think I can assure you it was not the captain,” 
said I; “for he and Bellairs are not acquainted.” 

“Wasn’t that the captain, with the red face and 
coloured handkerchief? He seemed to me to follow 
Bellairs’s game with the most thrilling interest,” ob- 
jected Mr. Morgan. 

“Perfectly true,” said I; “Trent is deeply interested; 
he very likely knew Bellairs, and he certainly knew 


IN WHICH THE CREW VANISH 151 


what he was there for; but I can put my hand in the 
fire that Bellairs didn’t know Trent.” 

“Another singularity,” observed the judge. “Well, 
we have had a capital forenoon. But you take an old 
lawyer’s advice, and get to Midway Island as fast as 
you can. There’s a pot of money on the table, and 
Bellairs and Co. are not the men to stick at trifles.” 

With this parting counsel, Judge Morgan shook 
hands and made off along Montgomery Street, while 
I entered the Occidental Hotel, on the steps of which 
we had finished our conversation. I was well known 
to the clerks, and as soon as it was understood that I 
was there to wait for Pinkerton and lunch, I was in- 
vited to a seat inside the counter. Here, then, in a re- 
tired corner, I was beginning to come a little to myself 
after these so violent experiences, when who should 
come hurrying in, and (after a moment with a clerk) 
fly to one of the telephone boxes but Mr. Henry D. 
Bellairs in person? Call it what you will, but the 
impulse was irresistible, and I rose and took a place 
immediately at the man’s back. It may be some excuse 
that I had often practised this very innocent form of 
eavesdropping upon strangers, and for fun. Indeed, I 
scarce know anything that gives a lower view of man’s 
intelligence than to overhear (as you thus do) one side 
of a communication. 

“Central,” said the attorney, “2241 and 584 B” (or 
some such numbers)—“‘Who’s that?—All right—Mr. 
Bellairs—Occidental; the wires are fouled in the other 
place—Yes, about three minutes—Yes! Yes—Your 
figure, I am sorry to say—No—lI had no authority— 
Neither more nor less—I have every reason to suppose 
so—O, Pinkerton, Montana Block—Yes—Yes—Very 
good, sir—As you will, sir—Disconnect 584 B.” 

Bellairs turned to leave; at sight of me behind him, 
up flew his hands, and he winced and cringed, as though 
in fear of bodily attack. “QO, it’s you!” he cried; and 
then, somewhat recovered, ‘Mr. Pinkerton’s partner, 
I believe? I am pleased to see you, sir—to congratulate 


152 THE WRECKER 


you on your late success.” And with that he was 
gone, obsequiously bowing as he passed. 

And now the madcap humour came upon me. It was 
plain Bellairs had been communicating with his prin- 
cipal; I knew the number, if not the uame; should I 
ring up at once, it was more than likely he would re- 
turn in person to the telephone; why should not I dash 
(vocally) into the presence of this mysterious person, 
and have some fun for my money? I pressed the bell. 

“Central,” said I, “connect again 2241 and 584 B.” 

A phantom central repeated the numbers; there was 
a pause, and then “‘Two two four one,” came in a tiny 
voice into my ear—a voice with the English sing- 
song—the voice plainly of a gentleman. “Is that you 
again, Mr. Bellairs?” it trilled. “I tell you it’s no use. 
Is that you, Mr. Bellairs? Who is that?” 

“T only want to put a single question,” said I, civilly. 
“Why do you want to buy the Flying Scud?” 

No answer came, The telephone vibrated and 
hummed in miniature with all the numerous talk of 
a great city; but the voice of 2241 was silent. Once 
and twice I put my question; but the tiny, sing-song 
English voice, I heard no more. The man, then, had 
fled? fled from an impertinent question? It scarce 
seemed natural to me; unless on the principle that the 
wicked fleeth when no man pursueth. I took the tele- 
phone list and turned the number up: “2241, Mrs. 
Keane, res. 942 Mission Street.” And that, short of 
driving to the house and renewing my iImpertinence in 
person, was all that I could do. 

Yet, as I resumed my seat in the corner of the office, 
I was conscious of a new element of the uncertain, the 
underhand, perhaps even the dangerous, in our adven- 
ture; and there was now a new picture in my mental 
gallery, to hang beside that of the wreck under its 
canopy of sea-birds and of Captain Trent mopping his 
red brow—the picture of a man with a telephone dice- 
box to his ear, and at the small voice of a single ques- 
tion, struck. suddenly as white as ashes. 


IN WHICH THE CREW VANISH 153 


From these considerations I was awakened by the 
striking of the clock., An hour and nearly twenty 
minutes had elapsed since Pinkerton departed for the 
money: he was twenty minutes behind time; and to 
me who knew so well his gluttonous despatch of busi- 
ness and had so frequently admired his iron punctu- 
ality, the fact spoke volumes. The twenty minutes 
slowly stretched into an hour; the hour had nearly 
extended to a second; and I still sat in my corner of the 
office, or paced the marble pavement of the hall, a prey 
to the most wretched anxiety and penitence. The hour 
for lunch was nearly over before I remembered that 
I had not eaten. Heaven knows I had no appetite; 
but there might still be much to do—it was needful 
I should keep myself in proper trim, if it were only to 
digest the now too probable bad news; and leaving 
word at the office for Pinkerton, I sat down to table 
and called for soup, oysters, and a pint of champagne. 

I was not long set, before my friend returned. He 
looked pale and rather old, refused to hear of food, 
and called for tea. 

“T suppose all’s up?” said I, with an incredible sink- 

ing. 
“No,” he replied; “I’ve pulled it through, Loudon; 
just pulled it through. I couldn’t have raised another 
cent in all Frisco. People don’t like it; Longhurst even 
went back on me; said he wasn’t a three-card-monte 
man.” 

“Well, what’s the odds?” said J. “That’s all we 
wanted, isn’t it?” 

“Loudon, I tell you I’ve had to pay blood for that 
money,” cried my friend, with almost savage energy 
and gloom. “It’s all on ninety days, too; I couldn’t 
get-another day—not another day. If we go ahead 
with this affair, Loudon, you'll have to go yourself and 
make the fur fly. I’ll stay of course—I’ve got to stay 
and face the trouble in this city; though, I tell you, 
I just long to go. I would show these fat brutes of 
sailors what work was; I would be all through that 


154 THE WRECKER 


wreck and out at the other end, before they had boosted 
themselves upon the deck! But you’ll do your level 
best, Loudon; I depend on you for that. You must be 
all fire and grit and dash from the word ‘go.’ That 
schooner and the boodle on board of her are bound to 
be here before three months, or it’s’ BUST—bust.” 

“T’ll swear I'll do my best, Jim; I’ll work double 
tides,” said I. “It is my fault that you are in this 
thing, and I’ll get you out again or kill myself. But 
what is that you say? ‘If we go ahead?’ Have we 
any choice, then?” 

“T’m coming to that,” said Jim. “It isn’t that I 
doubt the investment. Don’t blame yourself for that; 
you showed a fine, sound business instinct: I always 
knew it was in you, but then it ripped right out. I 
guess that little beast of an attorney knew what he 
was doing; and he wanted nothing better than to go 
beyond. No, there’s profit in the deal; it’s not that; 
it’s these ninety-day bills, and the strain I’ve given the 
credit, for I’ve been up and down, borrowing, and 
begging and bribing to borrow. I don’t believe there’s 
another man but me in ’Frisco,” he cried, with a sudden 
fervour of self-admiration, “who could have raised 
that last ten thousand!—Then there’s another thing. 
I had hoped you might have peddled that opium 
through the islands, which is safer and more profitable. 
But with this three-month limit, you must make tracks 
for Honolulu straight, and communicate by steamer. 
I'll try to put up something for you there; I’ll have a 
man spoken to who’s posted on that line of biz. Keep 
a bright lookout for him as soon’s you make the 
islands; for it’s on the cards he might pick you up at 
sea in a whale-boat or a steam-launch, and bring the 
dollars right on board.” 

It shows how much I had suffered morally during 
my sojourn in <an Francisco, that even now, when our 
fortunes trembled in the balance, I should have con- 
sented to become a smuggler and (of all things) a 


IN WHICH THE CREW VANISH 155 


smuggler of opium. Yet I did, and that in silence: 
without a protest, not without a twinge. 

“And suppose,” said I, ‘suppose the opium is so 
securely hidden that I can’t get hands on it.” 

“Then you will stay there till that brig is kindling- 
wood, and stay and split that kindling-wood with 
your penknife,” cried Pinkerton. ‘The stuff is there; 
we know that; and it must be found. But all this is 
only the one string to our bow—though I tell you I’ve 
gone into it head-first, as if 1t was our bottom dollar. 
Why, the first thing I did before I’d raised a cent, and 
with this other notion in my head already—the first 
thing I did was to secure the schooner. The Nora 
Creina, she is, sixty-four tons, quite big enough for our 
purpose since the rice is spoiled, and the fastest thing 
of her tonnage out of San Francisco. For a bonus of 
two hundred, and a monthly charter of three, I have 
her for my own time; wages and provisions, say four 
hundred more: a drop in the bucket. They began 
firing the cargo out of her (she was part loaded) near 
two hours ago; and about the same time John Smith 
got the order for stores. That’s what I call business.” 

“No doubt of that,” said I. “But the other notion?” 

“Well, here it is,’ said Jim. “You agree with me 
that Bellairs was ready to go higher?” 

I saw where he was coming. ‘Yes—and why 
shouldn’t he?” said I. “Is that the line?” 

“That’s the line, Loudon Dodd,” assented Jim. “If 
Bellairs and his principal have any desire to go me 
better, I’m their man.” 

A sudden thought, a sudden fear, shot into my mind. 
What if I had been right? What if my childish 
pleasantry had frightened the principal away, and 
thus destroyed our chance? Shame closed my mouth; 
I began instinctively a long course of reticence; and 
it was without a word of my meeting with Bellairs, or 
my discovery of the address in Mission Street, that I 
continued the discussion. 

“Doubtless fifty thousand was secs ope mentioned 


156 _ THE WRECKER 


as a round sum,” said I, “or at least, so Bellairs 
supposed. But at the same time it may be an outside 
sum; and to cover the expenses we have already in- 
curred for the money and the schooner—I am far from 
blaming you; I see how needful it was to be ready for 
either event—but to cover them we shall want a rather 
large advance.” 

“Bellairs will go to sixty thousand; it’s my belief, 
if he were properly handled, he would take the hun- 
dred,” replied Pinkerton. ‘Look back on the way the 
sale ran at the end.” 

“That is my own impression as regards Bellairs,” I 
admitted. “The point I am trying to make is that 
Bellairs himself may be mistaken; that what he sup- 
posed to be a round sum was really an outside figure.” 

“Well, Loudon, if that is so,’ said Jim, with extra- 
ordinary gravity of face and voice, “if that is so, let 
him take the Flying Scud at fifty thousand, and joy 
go with her! I prefer the loss.” 

“Is that so, Jim? Are we dipped as bad as that?” 
I cried. . 

“We've put our hand farther out than we can pull it 
in again, Loudon,” he replied. “Why, man, that fifty 
thousand dollars, before we get clear again, will cost 
us nearer seventy. Yes, it figures up overhead to more 
than ten per cent. a month; and I could do no better, 
and there isn’t the man breathing could have done as 
well. It was a miracle, Loudon. I couldn’t but admire 
myself. O, if we had just the four months! And you 
know, Loudon, it may still be done. With your energy 
and charm, if the worst comes to the worst, you can run 
the schooner as you ran one of your picnics; and we 
may have luck. And, O man! if we do pull it through, 
what a dashing operation it will be! What an adver- 
tisement! what a thing to talk of, and remember all 
our lives! However,” he broke off suddenly, ‘‘we must 
try the safe thing first. Here’s for the shyster!” 

There was another struggle in my mind, whether I 
should even now admit my knowledge of the Mission 


IN WHICH THE CREW VANISH 157 


Street address. But I had let the favourable moment 
shp. I had now, which made it the more awkward, 
not merely the original discovery, but my late sup- 
pression to confess. I could not help reasoning, besides, 
that the more natural course was to approach the 
principal by the road of his agent’s office; and there 
weighed upon my spirits a conviction that we were 
already too late, and that the man was gone two hours 
ago. Once more, then, I held my peace; and after 
an exchange of words at the telephone to assure our- 
selves he was at home, we set out for the attorney’s 
office. 

The endless streets of any American city pass, from 
one end to another, through strange degrees and vicis- 
situdes of splendour and distress, running under the 
same name between monumental warehouses, the dens 
and taverns of thieves, and the sward and shrubbery 
of villas. In San Francisco, the sharp inequalities of 
the ground, and the sea bordering on so many sides, 
greatly exaggerate these contrasts. The street for 
which we were now bound took its rise among blowing 
sands, somewhere in view of the Lone Mountain Ceme- 
tery; ran for a term across that rather windy Olympus 
of Nob Hill, or perhaps just skirted its frontier; passed 
- almost immediately after through a stage of little 
houses, rather impudently painted, and offering to the 
eye of the observer this diagnostic peculiarity, that 
the huge brass plates upon the small and _ highly 
coloured doors bore only the first names of ladies— 
Norah or Lily or Florence; traversed China Town, 
where it was doubtless undermined with opium cellars, 
and its blocks pierced, after the similitude of rabbit- 
warrens, with a hundred doors and passages and gal- 
leries; enjoyed a glimpse of high publicity at the 
corner of Kearney; and proceeded, among dives and 
warehouses, towards the City Front and the region of 
the water-rats. In this last stage of its career, where 
it was both grimy and solitary, and alternately quiet 
and roaring to the wheels of drays, we found a certain 


158 ‘THE WRECKER 


house of some pretension to neatness, and furnished 
with a rustic outside stair. On the pillar of the stair 
a black plate bore in gilded lettering this device: 
“Harry D. Bellairs, Attorney-at-Law. Consultations, 
9 to 6.” On ascending the stairs, a door was found to 
stand open on the balcony, with this further inscription, 
“Mr. Bellairs In.” 

“T wonder what we do next,” said I. 

“Guess we sail right in,” returned Jim, and suited the 
action to the word. 

The room in which we found ourselves was clean, 
but extremely bare. A rather old-fashioned secretaire 
stood by the wall, with a chair drawn to the desk; in 
one corner was a shelf with half-a-dozen law books; 
and I can remember literally not another stick of 
furniture. One inference imposed itself: Mr. Bellairs 
was in the habit of sitting down himself and suffering 
his clients to stand. At the far end, and veiled by a 
curtain of red baize, a second door communicated with 
the interior of the house. Hence, after some coughing 
and stamping, we elicited the shyster, who came timor- 
ously forth, for all the world like a man in fear of 
bodily assault, and then, recognising his guests, suffered 
from what I can only call a nervous paroxysm of 
courtesy. 

“Mr. Pinkerton and partner!” said he. “I will go 
and fetch you seats.” ! 

“Not the least,’ said Jim. “No time. Much rather 
stand. This is business, Mr. Bellairs. This morning, 
as you know, I bought the wreck, Flying Scud.” 

The lawyer nodded. 

“And bought her,” pursued my friend, “at a figure 
out of all proportion to the cargo and the circum- 
stances, as they appeared?” 

“And now you think better of it, and would like to 
be off with your bargain? I have been figuring upon 
this,” returned the lawyer. ‘My client, I will not hide 
from you, was displeased with me for putting her so 
high. I think we were both too heated, Mr. Pinkerton: 


IN WHICH THE CREW VANISH 159 


rivalry—the spirit of competition. But I will be quite 
frank—I know when I am dealing with gentlemen— 
and I am almost certain, if you leave the matter in my 
hands, my client would relieve you of the bargain, so 
as you would lose’—he consulted our faces with 
gimlet-eyed calculation—‘“‘nothing,” he added shrilly. 

And here Pinkerton amazed me. 

“That’s a little too thin,” said he, ‘I have the wreck. 
I know there’s boodle in her, and I mean to keep her. 
What I want is some points which may save me need- 
less expense, and which I am prepared to pay for, 
money down. The thing for you to consider is just 
this: am I to deal with you, or direct with your prin- 
cipal? If you are prepared to give me the facts right 
_ off, why, name your figure. Only one thing!’ added 
Jim, holding a finger up, “when I say ‘money down,’ 
I mean bills payable when the ship returns, and if the 
information proves reliable. I don’t buy pigs in. 
pokes.” 

I had seen the lawyer’s face light up for a moment, 
and then, at the sound of Jim’s proviso, miserably 
fade. “I guess you know more about this wreck than 
I do, Mr. Pinkerton,” said he. ‘I only know that I was 
told to buy the thing, and tried, and couldn’t.” 

“What I like about you, Mr. Bellairs, is that you 
waste no time,” said Jim. ‘Now then; your client’s 
name and address.” 

“On consideration,” replied the lawyer, with inde- 
scribable furtivity, “I cannot see that I am entitled to 
communicate my client’s name. I will sound him for 
you with pleasure, if you care to instruct me; but I 
cannot see that I can give you his address.” 

“Very well,” said Jim, and put his hat on. “Rather. 
a strong step, isn’t it?” (Between every sentence was 
a clear pause.) ‘Not think better of it? Well, come— 
eall it a dollar!” 

“Mr. Pinkerton, sir!’ exclaimed the offended attor- 
ney; and indeed, I myself was almost afraid that Jim 
had mistaken his man and gone too far. 


160 THE WRECKER 


“No present use for a dollar?” says Jim. “Well, 
look here, Mr. Bellairs: we’re both busy men, and I'll 
go to my outside figure with you right away p 

“Stop this, Pinkerton,” I broke in. “I know the 
address: 924 Mission Street.” 

I do not know whether Pinkerton or Bellairs was 
the more taken aback. 

“Why in the snakes didn’t you say so, Loudon?” 
cried my friend. 

“You didn’t ask for it before,” said I, colourmg to my 
temples under his troubled eyes. 

It was Bellairs who broke silence, kindly supplying 
me with all that I had yet to learn. “Since you know 
Mr. Dickson’s address,” said he, plainly burning to be 
rid of us, ‘‘I suppose I need detain you no longer.” 

I do not know how Pinkerton felt, but I had death 
in my soul as we came down the outside stair, from 
‘the den of this blotched spider. My whole being was 
strung, waiting for Jim’s first question, and prepared 
to blurt out, I believe, almost with tears, a full avowal. 
But my friend asked nothing. 

“We must hack it,” said he, tearing off in the direc- 
tion of the nearest stand. “No time to be lost. You 
saw how I changed ground. No use in paying the shy- 
ster’s commission.” 

Again I expected a reference to my suppression; 
again I was disappointed. It was plain Jim feared 
the subject, and I felt I almost hated him for that 
fear. At last, when we were already in the hack and 
driving towards Mission Street, I could bear my sus- 
pense no longer. 

“You do not ask me about that address,” said I. 

“No,” said he, quickly and timidly. “What was 
it? I would like to know.” 

The note of timidity offended me like a buffet; my 
temper rose as hot as mustard. “I must request you 
do not ask me,” said I. “It is a matter I cannot ex- 
plain.” iow 

The moment the foolish words were said, that 





IN WHICH THE CREW VANISH 161 


moment I would have given worlds to recall them: how 
much more, when Pinkerton, patting my hand, replied: 
“All right, dear boy; not another word; that’s all done. 
I’m convinced it’s perfectly right.” To return upon the 
subject was beyond my courage; but I vowed inwardly 
that I should do my utmost in the future for this mad 
speculation, and that I would cut myself in pieces 
before Jim should lose one dollar. 

We had no sooner arrived at the address than I had 
other things to think of. 

“Mr. Dickson? He’s gone,” said the landlady. 

“Where had he gone?” 

“T’m sure I can’t tell you,” she answered. ‘He was 
quite a stranger to me.” 

“Did he express his baggage, ma’am?” asked Pinker- 
ton. 

“Hadn’t any,” was the reply. ‘He came last night 
and left again to-day with a satchel.” 

“When did he leave?” I inquired. 

“It was about noon,” replied the landlady. “Some 
one rang up the telephone, and asked for him; and I 
reckon he got some news, for he left right away, al- 
though his rooms were taken by the week. He seemed 
considerable put out: I reckon it was a death.” 

My heart sank; perhaps my idiotic jest had indeed 
driven him away; and again I asked myself, Why? and 
whirled for a moment in a vortex of untenable hy- 
potheses. 

“What was he like, ma’am?” Pinkerton was asking, 
when I returned to consciousness of my surroundings. 

“A clean-shaved man,” said the woman, and could 
be led or driven into no more significant description. 

“Pull up at the nearest drug-store,” said Pinkerton 
to the driver; and when there, the telephone was put 
in operation, and the message sped to the Pacific Mail 
Steamship Company’s office—this was in the days be- 
fore Spreckles had arisen—‘‘When does the next China 
steamer touch at Honolulu?” 


162 THE WRECKER 


“The City of Pekin; she cast off the dock to-day, at 
half-past one,” came the reply. 

“It’s a clear case of bolt,” said Jim. “He’s skipped, 
or my name’s not Pinkerton. He’s gone to head us 
off at Midway Island.” 

Somehow I was not so sure; there were elements in 
the case, not known to Pinkerton—the fears of the cap- 
tain, for example—that inclined me otherwise; and the 
idea that I had terrified Mr. Dickson into flight, though 
resting on so slender a foundation, clung obstinately 
in my mind. ‘“Shouldn’t we see the list of passengers?” 
I asked. 

“Dickson is such a blamed common name,” returned 
Jim; ‘‘and then, as like as not, he would change it.” 

At this I had another intuition. A negative of a 
street scene, taken unconsciously when I was absorbed 
in other thoughts, rose in my memory with not a 
feature blurred: a view, from Bellairs’s door as we 
were coming down, of muddy roadway, passing drays, 
matted telegraph wires, a China-boy with a basket 
on his head, and (almost opposite) a corner grocery 
with the name of Dickson in great gilt letters. 

“Yes,” said I, “you are right; he would change it. 
And anyway, I don’t believe it was his name at all; I 
believe he took it from a corner grocery _ beside 
Bellairs’s.” 

“As like as not,” said Jim, still standing on the 
sidewalk with contracted brows. 

“Well, what shall we do next?” I asked. 

“The natural thing would be to rush the schooner,” 
he replied. “But I don’t know. I telephoned the cap- 


tain to go at it head down and heels in air; he answered 


like a little man; and I guess he’s getting around. I 
believe, Loudon, we’ll give Trent a chance. Trent was 
in it; he was in it up to the neck; even if he couldn't 
buy, he could give us the straight tip.” 
“T think so too,” said I. ‘Where shall we find him?” 
“British consulate, of course,” said Jim. “And that’s 
another reason for taking him first. We can hustle 


a a 


IN WHICH THE CREW VANISH 163 


that schooner up all evening; but when the consulate’s 
shut, it’s shut.” | 

At the consulate, we learned that Captain Trent had 
alighted (such is I believe the classic phrase) at the 
What Cheer House. To that large and unaristocratic 
hostelry we drove, and addressed ourselves to a large 
clerk, who was chewing a toothpick and_ looking 
straight before him. 

“Captain Jacob Trent?” 

“Gone,” said the clerk. 

“Where has he gone?” asked Pinkerton. 

“Cain’t say,” said the clerk. 

“When did he go?” I asked. 

“Don’t know,” said the clerk, and with the simplicity 
of 7 *monarch offered us the spectacle of his broad 
back. 

What might have happened next I dread to picture, 
for Pinkerton’s excitement had been growing steadily, 
and now burned dangerously high; but we were spared 
extremities by the intervention of a second clerk. 

. “Why! Mr. Dodd!” he exclaimed, running forward 
to the counter. ‘Glad to see you, sir! Can I do any- 
thing in your way?” 

How virtuous actions blossom! Here was a young 
man to whose pleased ears I had rehearsed Just before 
the battle, mother, at some weekly picnic; and now, 
in that tense moment of my life, he came (from the 
machine) to be my helper. 

“Captain Trent of the wreck? Oh yes, Mr. Dodd; he 
left about twelve; he and another of the men. The 
Kanaka went earlier by the City of Pekin; I know 
that; I remember expressing his chest. Captain 
Trent’s? I'll inquire, Mr. Dodd. Yes, they were all 
here. Here are the names on the register; perhaps 
you would care to look at them while I go and see 
about the baggage?” 

I drew the book towards me, and stood looking at 
the four names all written in the same hand, rather a 


164 THE WRECKER 


big and rather a bad one: Trent, Brown, Hardy, and 
(instead of Ah Sing) Jos. Amalu. _ 

“Pinkerton,” said I, suddenly, “have you that Occi- 
dental in your pocket?” 

“Never left me,” said Pinkerton, producing the 
paper. . 

I turned to the account of the wreck. “Here,” said 
I; “here’s the name. ‘Elias Goddedaal, mate.’ Why 
do we never come across Elias Goddedaal?” | 

“That’s so,” said Jim. ‘Was he with the rest in 
that saloon when you saw them?” 

“T don’t believe it,” said I. “They were only four, 
and there was none that behaved like a mate.” 

At this moment the clerk returned with his report. 

“The captain,” it appeared, ‘came with some kind of 
an express waggon, and he and the man took off three 
chests and a big satchel. Our porter helped to put 
them on, but they drove the cart themselves. The 
porter thinks they went down town. It was about 
one.” 

“Still in time for the City of Pekin,’ observed Jim. 

“How many of them were here?” I inquired. 

“Three, sir, and the Kanaka,” replied the clerk. “I 
can’t somehow find out about the third, but he’s gone 
too.” 

“Mr. Goddedaal, the mate, wasn’t here then?” I 
asked, | 

Beto) Mr. Dodd, none but what you see,” says the 
clerk. 

‘‘Nor-you never heard where he was?” 

“No. Any particular reason for finding these men, 
Mr. Dodd?” inquired the clerk. 

“This gentleman and I have bought the wreck,” I 
explained; “we wished to get some information, and it 
is very annoying to find the men all gone.” 

A certain group had gradually formed about us, for 
the wreck was still a matter of interest; and at this, 
one of the bystanders, a rough seafaring man, spoke 
suddenly. 


IN WHICH THE CREW VANISH 165 


“T guess the mate won’t be gone,” said he. ‘“He’s 
main sick; never left the sick-bay aboard the Tempest; 
so they tell me.” 

Jim took me by the sleeve. “Back to the consulate,” 
said he. 

But even at the consulate nothing was known of Mr. 
Goddedaal. The doctor of the Tempest had certified 
him very sick; he had sent his papers in, but never 
appeared in person before the authorities. 

“Have you a telephone laid on to the Jempest?” 
asked Pinkerton. 

“Laid on yesterday,” said the clerk. 

“Do you mind asking, or letting me ask? We are 
very anxious to get hold of Mr. Goddedaal.”’ 

“All right,” said the clerk, and turned to the tele- 
phone. “I’m sorry,’ he said presently, “Mr. Godde- 
daal has left the ship, and no one knows where he is.” 

“Do you pay the man’s passage home?” I inquired, 
a sudden thought striking me. 

“If they want it,” said the clerk; “sometimes they 
don’t. But we paid the Kanaka’s passage to Honolulu 
this morning; and by what Captain Trent was saying, 
I understand the rest are going home together.” 

“Then you haven’t paid them?” said I. 

“Not yet,” said the clerk. 

“And you would be a good deal surprised, if I were 
to tell you they were gone already?” I asked. 

“Oh, I should think you were mistaken,” said he. 

“Such is the fact, however,” said I. 

“T am sure you must be mistaken,” he repeated. 

“May I use your telephone one moment?” asked 
Pinkerton; and as soon as permission had been granted, 
I heard him ring up the printing-office where our ad- 
-vertisements were usually handled. More I did not 
hear; for suddenly recalling the big, bad hand in the 
register of What Cheer House, I asked the consulate 
clerk if he had a specimen of Captain Trent’s writing. 
Whereupon I learned that the captain could not write, 


166 THE WRECKER 


having cut his hand open a little before the loss of the 
brig; that the latter part of the log even had been 
written up by Mr. Goddedaal, and that Trent had 
always signed with his left hand. By the time I had 
gleaned this information, Pinkerton was ready. 

“That’s all that we can do. Now for the schooner,” 
said he; “and by to-morrow evening I lay hands on 
Goddedaal, or my name’s not Pinkerton.” 

_ “How have you managed?” I inquired. 

“You'll see before you get to bed,” said Pinkerton. 
“And now, after all this backwarding and forwarding, 
and that hotel clerk, and that bug Bellairs, it’ll be a 
change and a kind of consolation to see the schooner. 
I guess things are humming there.” 

But on the wharf, when we reached it, there was no 
sign of bustle, and, but for the galley smoke, no mark 
of life on the Norah Creina. Pinkerton’s face grew 
pale, and his mouth straightened, as he leaped on 
board. 

‘“Where’s the captain of this ?”* and he left the 
phrase unfinished, finding no epithet sufficiently ener- 
getic for his thoughts. 

It did not appear whom or what he was addressing; 
but a head, presumably the cook’s, appeared in answer 
at the galley door. 

“In the cabin, at dinner,” said the cook deliberately 
chewing as he ‘spoke. 

“Ts that cargo out?” 

NO eli 

“None of it?” 

“QO, there’s some of it out. We'll get at the rest of 
it livelier to-morrow, I guess.” 

“TI guess there’ll be something broken first,” said 
Pinkerton, and strode to the cabin. 

Here we found a man, fat, dark, and quiet, seated 
gravely at what seemed a liberal meal. He looked up, 
upon our entrance; and seeing Pinkerton continue to 
stand facing him in silence, hat on head, arms folded, 





IN WHICH THE CREW VANISH 167 


and lips compressed, an expression of mingled wonder 
and annoyance began to dawn upon his placid face. 

“Well,” said Jim. “And so this is what you call 
rushing around?” 

“Who are you?” cried the captain. 

“Me! I’m Pinkerton!” retorted Jim, as though the 
name had been a talisman. 

“You’re not very civil, whoever you are,” was the 
reply. But still a certain effect had been produced, 
for he scrambled to his feet, and added hastily, “A 
man must have a bit of dinner, you know, Mr. Pinker- 
ton.” 

“Where’s your mate?” snapped Jim. 

“He’s up town,” returned the other. 

“Up town!” sneered Pinkerton. “Now I'll tell you 
what you are: you're a Fraud; and if I wasn’t afraid 
of dirtying my boot, I would kick you and your dinner 
into that dock.” 

“T’ll tell you something, too,” retorted the captain, 
duskily flushing. ‘I wouldn’t sail this ship for the man 
you are, if you went upon your knees. I’ve dealt with 
gentlemen up to now.” 

“T ean tell you the names of a number of gentlemen 
you'll never deal with any more, and that’s the whole 
of Longhurst’s gang,” said Jim. “I’ll put your pipe 
out in that quarter, my friend. Here, rout out your 
traps as quick as look at it, and take your vermin along 
with you. I’ll have a captain in, this very night, that’s 
a sailor, and some sailors to work for him.” 

“T’ll go when I please, and that’s to-morrow morn- 
ing,” cried the captain after us, as we departed for 
the shore. 

“There’s something gone wrong with the world 
to-day; it must have come bottom up!” wailed Pinker- 
ton. “Bellairs, and then the hotel clerk, and now this 
Fraud! And what am I to do for a captain, Loudon, 
with Longhurst gone home an hour ago, and the boys 
all scattered?” 


168 THE WRECKER 


“T know,” said I. “Jump in!” And then to the 
driver: “Do you know Black Tom’s?” 

Thither then we rattled; passed through the bar, 
and found (as I had hoped) Johnson in the enjoyment 
of club life. The table had been thrust upon one side; 
a South Sea merchant was discoursing music from a 
mouth-organ; and in the middle of the floor Johnson 
and a fellow-seaman, their arms clasped about each 
other’s bodies, in one corner somewhat heavily danced. 
The room was both cold and close; a jet of gas, 
which continually menaced the heads of the per- 
formers, shed a coarse illumination; the mouth-organ 
sounded shrill and dismal; and the faces of all con- 
cerned were churchlike in their gravity. It were, 
of course, indelicate to interrupt these solemn frolics; 
so we edged ourselves to chairs, for all the world . 
like belated comers in a concert-room, and pa- 
tiently waited for the end. At length the organist, 
having exhausted his supply of breath, ceased ab- 
ruptly in the middle of a bar. With the cessation of 
a strain, the dancers likewise came to full stop, swayed 
a moment, still embracing, and then separated and 
looked about the circle for applause. 

“Very well danced!” said one; but it appears the 
compliment was not strong enough for the performers, 
who (forgetful of the proverb) took up the tale in 
person. ) 

“Well!” said Johnson. “I mayn’t be no sailor, but I 
can dance!” | 

And his late partner, with an almost pathetic con- 
viction, added, ‘My foot is as light as a feather.” 

Seeing how the wind set, you may be sure I added a 
few words of praise before I carried Johnson alone 
into the passage: to whom, thus mollified, I told so 
much as I judged needful of our situation, and begged 
him, if he would not take the job himself, to find me 
a smart man. 


IN WHICH THE CREW VANISH 169 


“Me!” he cried. “I couldn’t no more do it than I 
could try to go to hell!” 

“I thought you were a mate,’ said I. ; 

“So I am a mate,” giggled Johnson, “and you don’t 
catch me shipping noways else. But I’ll tell you what, 
I believe I can get you Arty Nares: you seen Arty: 
first-rate navigator and a son of a gun for style.” And 
he proceeded to explain to me that Mr. Nares, who 
had the promise of a fine barque in six months, after 
things had quieted down, was in the meantime living 
very private, and would be pleased to have a change 
of air. 

I called out Pinkerton and told him. “Nares!’”’ he 
cried, as soon as I had come to the name. “I would 
jump at the chance of a man that had had Nares’s 
trousers on! Why, Loudon, he’s the smartest deep- 
water mate out of San Francisco, and draws his divi- 
dends regular in service and out.” ‘This hearty 
indorsation clinched the proposal; Johnson agreed to 
produce Nares before six the following morning; and 
Black Tom, being called into the consultation prom- 
ised us four smart hands for the same hour, and even 
(what appeared to all of us excessive) promised them 
sober. 7 

The streets were fully lighted when we left Black 
Tom’s: street after street sparkling with gas or elec- 
tricity, line after line of distant luminaries climbing 
the steep sides of hills towards the overvaulting dark- 
ness; and on the other hand, where the waters of the 
bay invisibly trembled, a hundred riding lanterns 
marked the position of a hundred ships. The sea-fog 
flew high in heaven; and at the level of man’s life and 
business it was clear and chill. By silent consent, we 
paid the hack off, and proceeded arm in arm towards 
the Poodle Dog for dinner. 

At one of the first hoardings, I was aware of a bill- 
sticker at work: it was a late hour for this employment, 


170 THE WRECKER 
and I checked Pinkerton until the sheet should be un- 
folded. This is what I read:— 


. TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS REWARD. 
OFFICERS AND MEN OF THE 
WRECKED BRIG “FLYING SCUD” 


APPLYING 










PERSONALLY OR BY LETTER 
AT THE OFFICE OF JAMES PINKERTON 






MONTANA BLOCK, 
BEFORE NOON TO-MORROW, TUESDAY, 12TH, 
WILL RECEIVE 
TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS REWARD. 


“This is your idea, Pinkerton!” I cried. 

“Yes. They’ve lost no time; I’ll say that for them— 
not like the Fraud,” said he. “But mind you, Loudon, 
that’s not half of it. The cream of the idea’s here: 
we know our man’s sick; well, a copy of that has been 
mailed to every hospital, every doctor, and every 
drug-store in San Francisco.” 

Of course, from the nature of our business, Pinkerton 
could do a thing of the kind at a figure extremely re- 
duced; for all that, I was appalled at the extravagance, 
and said so. 

“What matter a few dollars now?” he replied sadly. 
“Tt’s in three months that the pull comes, Loudon.” 

We walked on again in silence, not without a shiver. 
Even at the Poodle Dog, we took our food with small 
appetite and less speech; and it was not until he was 
warmed with a third glass of champagne that Pinker- 
ton cleared his throat and looked upon me with a 
deprecating eye. 

“Loudon,” said he, “there was a subject you didn’t 


IN WHICH THE CREW VANISH 171 


wish to be referred to. I only want to do so indirectly. 
It wasn’t’—he faltered—‘“it wasn’t because you were 
dissatisfied with me?” he concluded, with a quaver. 

“Pinkerton!” cried I. 

“No, no, not a word just now,” he hastened to pro- 
ceed. ‘‘Let me speak first. I appreciate, though I can’t 
imitate, the delicacy of your nature; and I can well 
understand you would rather die than speak of it, 
and yet might feel disappointed. I did think I could 
have done better myself. But when I found how tight 
money was in this city, and a man like Douglas B. 
Longhurst—a forty-niner, the man that stood at bay 
in a corn patch for five hours against the San Diablo 
squatters—weakening on the operation, I tell you, 
Loudon, I began to despair; and—I may have made 
mistakes, no doubt there are thousands who could have 
done better—but I give you a loyal hand on it, I did 
my best.” 

“My poor Jim,” said I, “as if I ever doubted you! 
as if I didn’t know you had done wonders! All day 
I’ve been admiring your energy and resource. And as 
for that affair 4 

“No, Loudon, no more, not a word more! I don’t 
want to hear,” cried Jim. 

“Well, to tell you the truth, I don’t want to tell you,” 
said I; “for it’s a thing I’m ashamed of.” 

“Ashamed, Loudon? O, don’t say that; don’t use 
such an expression even in jest!” protested Pinkerton. 

“Do you never do anything you're ashamed of?” I 
inquired. 

“No,” says he, rolling his eyes. “Why? I’m some- 
times sorry afterwards, when it pans out different from 
what I figured. But I can’t see what I would want to 
be ashamed for.” 

I sat a while considering with admiration the sim- 
plicity of my friend’s character. Then I sighed. ‘Do 
you know, Jim, what I’m sorriest for?” said I “At 
this rate, I can’t be best man at your marriage.” 

“My marriage!” he repeated, echoing the sigh. “No 





172 _ THE WRECKER 


marriage for me now. I’m going right down to-night 
to break it to her. I think that’s what’s shaken me all 
day. I feel as if I had had no right (after I was en- 
gaged) to operate so widely.” 

“Well, you know, Jim, it was my sims and you 
must lay the blame on me,” said I. 

“Not a cent of it!” he cried. “I was as eager as 
yourself, only not so bright at the begining. No; 
I’ve myself to thank for it; but it’s a wrench.” 

While Jim departed on his dolorous mission, I re- 
turned alone to the office, lit the gas, and sat down to 
reflect on the events of that momentous day: on the 
strange features of the tale that had been so far 
unfolded, the disappearances, the terrors, the great 
sums of money; and on the dangerous and ungrateful 
task that awaited me in the immediate future. 

It is difficult, in the retrospect of such affairs, to 
avoid. attributing to ourselves in the past a measure 
of the knowledge we possess to-day. But I may say, 
and yet be well within the mark, that I was consumed 
that night with a fever of suspicion and curiosity; 
exhausted my fancy in solutions, which I still dismissed 
as incommensurable with the facts; and in the mystery 
by which I saw myself surrounded, found a precious 
stimulus for my courage and a convenient soothing 
draught for conscience. Even had all been plain sail- 
ing, I do not hint that I should have drawn back. 
Smuggling is one of the meanest of crimes, for by that 
we rob a whole country pro rata, and are therefore 
certain to impoverish the poor: to smuggle opium is 
an offence particularly dark, since it stands related not 
so much to murder, as to massacre. Upon all these 
points I was quite clear; my sympathy was all in arms 
against my interest; and had not Jim been involved, I 
could have dwelt almost with satisfaction on the idea 
of my failure. But Jim, his whole fortune, and his 
marriage, depended upon my success; and I preferred 
the interests of my friend before those of all the 
islanders in the South Seas. This is a poor, private 


IN WHICH THE CREW VANISH 173 


morality, if you like; but it is mine, and the best I 
have; and I am not half so much ashamed of having 
embarked at all on this adventure, as I am proud 
that (while I was in it, and for the sake of my friend) 
I was up early and down late, set my own hand to 
everything, took dangers as they came, and for once 
in my life played the man throughout. At the same 
time, I could have desired another field of energy; and 
I was the more grateful for the redeeming element of 
mystery. Without that, though I might have gone 
ahead and done as well, it would scarce have been with 
ardour; and what inspired me that night with an im- 
patient greed of the sea, the island, and the wreck, 
was the hope that I might stumble there upon the 
answer to a hundred questions, and learn why Cap- 
tain Trent fanned his red face in the exchange, and why 
Mr. Dickson fled from the telephone in the Mission 
Street lodging-house. 


CHAPTER XI 
IN WHICH JIM AND I TAKE DIFFERENT WAYS 


WAS unhappy when I closed my eyes; and it was 
to unhappiness that I opened them again next 
morning, to a confused sense of some calamity still in- 
articulate, and to the consciousness of jaded limbs and 
of a swimming head. I must have lain for some time 
inert and stupidly miserable, before I became aware 
of a reiterated knocking at the door; with which dis- 
covery all my wits flowed back in their accustomed 
channels, and I remembered the sale, and the wreck, 
and Goddedaal, and Nares, and Johnson, and Black 
Tom, and the troubles of yesterday, and the manifold 
engagements of the day that was to come. The 
thought thrilled me like a trumpet in the hour of battle. 
In a moment, I had leaped from bed, crossed the office 
where Pinkerton lay in a deep trance of sleep on the 
convertible sofa, and stood in the doorway, in my 
night gear, to receive our visitors. 
Johnson was first, by way of usher, smiling. From 
a little behind, with his Sunday hat tilted forward over 
his brow, and a cigar glowing between his lips, Captain 
Nares acknowledged our previous acquaintance with a 
succinct nod. Behind him again, in the top of the 
stairway, a knot of sailors, the new crew of the Norah 
Creina, stood polishing the wall with back and elbow. 
These I left without, to their reflections. But our two 
officers I carried at once into the office, where (taking 
Jim by the shoulder) I shook him slowly into con- 
sciousness. He sat up, all abroad for the moment, and 
stared on the new captain. 
174 


JIM AND I TAKE DIFFERENT WAYS 175 


“Jim,” said I, “this is Captain Nares. Captain, Mr. 
Pinkerton.” 

Nares repeated his curt nod, still without speech; 
and I thought he held us both under a watchful 
scrutiny. 

“O!” says Jim, “this is Captain Nares, is it? Good 
morning, Captain Nares. Happy to have the pleasure 
of your acquaintance, sir. I know you well by repu- 
tation.” 

Perhaps, under the circumstances of the moment, 
this was scarce a welcome speech. At least, Nares re- 
ceived it with a grunt. 

“Well, Captain,” Jim continued, “you know about 
the size of the business? You're to take the Norah 
Creina to Midway Island, break up a wreck, call at 
Honolulu, and back to this port? I suppose that’s 
understood?” 

“Well,” returned Nares, with the same unamiable 
reserve, “for a reason, which I guess you know, the 
cruise may suit me; but there’s a point or two to settle. 
We shall have to talk, Mr. Pinkerton. But whether I 
go or not, somebody will; there’s no sense in losing 
time; and you might give Mr. Johnson a note, let him 
take the hands right down, and set to to overhaul 
the rigging. The beasts look sober,” he added, with an 
air of great disgust, ‘‘and need putting to work to keep 
them so.” 

This being agreed upon, Nares watched his subordi- 
nate depart and drew a visible breath. 

“And now we’re alone and can talk,” said he. 
“What’s this thing about? It’s been advertised like 
Barnum’s museum; that poster of yours has set the 
Front talking; that’s an objection in itself, for I’m 
laying a little dark just now; and anyway, before i 
take the ship, I require to know what I’m going after.” 

Thereupon Pinkerton gave him the whole tale, be- 
ginning with a businesslike precision, and working him- 
self up, as he went on, to the boiling-point of narra- 
tive enthusiasm. Nares sat and smoked, hat still on 


176 THE WRECKER 


head, and acknowledged each fresh feature of the 
story with a frowning nod. But his pale blue eyes 
betrayed him, and lighted visibly. 

“Now you see for yourself,” Pinkerton concluded: 
“there’s every last chance that Trent has skipped to 
Honolulu, and it won’t take much of that fifty thou- 
sand dollars to charter a smart schooner down to Mid- 
way. Here’s where I want a man!” cried Jim, with 
contagious energy. “That wreck’s mine; I’ve paid for 
it, money down; and if it’s got to be fought for, I 
want to see it fought for lively. If you’re not back 
in ninety days, I tell you plainly, I’ll make one of the 
biggest busts ever seen upon this coast; it’s life or 
death for Mr. Dodd and me. As like as not, it’ll come 
to grapples on the island; and when I heard your name 
last night—and a blame’ sight more this morning when 
I saw the eye you’ve got in your head—lI said, ‘Nares 
is good enough for me!’ ” 

“I guess,” observed Nares, studying the ash of his 
cigar, ‘the sooner I get that schooner outside the Faral- 
lones, the better you’ll be pleased.” 

“You're the man I dreamed of!” cried Jim, bouncing 
on the bed. “There's not five per cent. of fraud in 
all your carcase.’ 

“Just hold on,” said Nares. ‘There’s another point. 
I heard some talk about a supercargo.” 

“That’s Mr. Dodd, here, my partner,” replied Jim. 

“T don’t see it,” returned the captain, dryly. “One 
captain’s enough for any ship that ever I was aboard.” 

“Now, don’t you start disappointing me,” said 
Pinkerton; ‘‘for you’re talking without thought. I’m 
not going to give you the run of the books of this firm, 
am I? I guess not. Well, this is not only a cruise; 
it’s a business operation; and that’s in the hands of 
my partner. You sail the ship, you see to breaking up 
that wreck and keeping the men upon the jump, and 
you'll find your hands about full. Only no mistake 
about one thing: it has to be done to Mr. Dodd’s satis- 
faction; for it’s Mr. Dodd that’s paying.” 


JIM AND I TAKE DIFFERENT WAYS 177 


“I’m accustomed to give satisfaction,’ said Mr. 
Nares, with a dark flush. 

“And so you will here!” cried Pinkerton. “I under- 
stand you. You're prickly to handle, but yow’re 
straight all through.” 

“The position’s got to be understood, though,” re- 
turned Nares, perhaps a trifle mollified. ‘“My position, 
I mean. I’m not going to ship sailing-master; it’s 
enough out of my way already, to set a foot on this 
mosquito schooner.”’ 

“Well, Pll tell you,” retorted Jim, with an indescrib- 
able twinkle: “‘you’ll just meet me on the ballast, and 
we'll make it a barquentine.” 

Nares laughed a little; tactless Pinkerton had once 
more gained a victory in tact. ‘‘Then there’s another 
point,” resumed the captain, tacitly relinquishing the 
last. “How about the owners?” 

“OQ, you leave that to me; I’m one of Longhurst’s 
erowd, you know,” said Jim, with sudden bristling 
vanity. “Any man that’s good enough for me, is good 
enough for them.” 

“Who are they?” asked Nares. 

“M Intyre and Spittal,” said Jim. : 

“Q) well, give me a card of yours,” said the captain: 

“vou needn’t bother to write; I keep M’Intyre and 
Spittal in my vest-pocket.” 

Boast for boast; it was always thus with Nares and 
Pinkerton—the two vainest men of my acquaintance. 
And having thus reinstated himself in his own opinion, 
the captain rose, and, with a couple of his stiff nods, 
departed. 

“Jim,” I cried, as the door closed behind him, “I 
don’t like that man.” 

“You’ve just got to, Loudon,” returned Jim. ‘“He’s 
a typical American seaman—brave as a lion, full of 
resource, and stands high with his owners. He’s a man 
with a record.” 

“For brutality at sea,” said L. 

“Say what you like,” exclaimed Pinkerton, “it was.a 


178 THE WRECKER 


good hour we got him in: I’d trust Mamie’s life to him 
to-morrow.” 

“Well, and talking of Mamie?” says I. 

Jim paused with his trousers half on. “She’s the 
gallantest little soul God ever made!” he cried. 
“Loudon, I meant to knock you up last night, and I 
hope you won’t take it unfriendly that I didn’t. I 
went in and looked at you asleep; and I saw you were 
all broken up, and let you be. The news would keep, 
anyway; and even you, Loudon, couldn’t feel it the 
same way as I did.” 

“What news?” I asked. 

“Tt’s this way,’ says Jim. “I told her how we stood, 
and that I backed down from marrying. ‘Are you 
tired of me?’ says she: God bless her! Well, I ex- 
plained the whole thing over again, the chance of a 
smash, your absence unavoidable, the point I made of 
having you for the best man, and that. ‘If you’re not 
tired of me, I think I see one way to manage,’ says she. 
‘Let’s get married to-morrow, and Mr. Loudon can be 
best man before he goes to sea.’ That’s how she said 
it, crisp and bright, like one of Dicken’s characters. It 
was no good for me to talk about the smash. ‘You'll 
want me all the more,’ she said. Loudon, I only pray 
I can make it up to her; I prayed for it last night 
beside your bed, while you lay sleeping—for you, and 
Mamie and myself; and—I don’t know if you quite 
believe in prayer, I’m a bit Ingersollian myself—but a 
kind of sweetness came over me, and I couldn’t help 
but think it was an answer. Never was a man so 
lucky! You and me and Mamie; it’s a triple cord, 
Loudon. If either of you were to die! And she likes 
you so much, and thinks you so accomplished and 
distingué-looking, and was just as set as I was to have 
you for best man. ‘Mr. Loudon,’ she calls you; seems 
to me so friendly! And she sat up till three in the 
morning fixing up a costume for the marriage; it did 
me good to see her, Loudon, and to see that needle 
going, going, and to say ‘All this hurry, Jim, is just 


JIM AND I TAKE DIFFERENT WAYS 179 


to marry you!’ I couldn’t believe it; it was so like 
some blame’ fairy story. To think of those old tin- 
type times about turned my head; I was so unrefined 
then, and so illiterate, and so lonesome; and here I 
am in clover, and I’m blamed if I can see what I’ve 
done to deserve it.” 

So he poured forth with innocent volubility the ful- 
ness of his heart; and I, from these irregular com- 
munications, must pick out, here a little and there a 
little, the particulars of his new plan. They were to 
be married, sure enough, that day; the wedding break- 
fast was to be at Frank’s; the evening to be passed in a 
visit of God-speed aboard the Norah Creina; and then 
we were to part, Jim and I, he to his married life, I 
on my sea-enterprise. If ever I cherished an ill-feeling 
for Miss Mamie, I forgave her now; so brave and kind, 
so pretty and venturesome, was her decision. The 
weather frowned overhead with a leaden sky, and San 
Francisco had never (in all my experience) looked so 
black, and gaunt, and shoddy, and crazy, like a city 
prematurely old; but through all my wanderings and 
errands to and fro, by the dock side or in the jostling 
street, among rude sounds and ugly sighs, there ran 
in my mind, like a tiny strain of music, the thought 
of my friend’s happiness. 

For that was indeed a day of many and incongruous 
occupations. Breakfast was scarce swallowed, before 
Jim must run to the City Hall and Frank’s about the 
eares of marriage, and I hurry to John Smith’s upon 
the account of stores, and thence, on a visit of certifi- 
cation, to the Norah Creina. Methought she looked 
smaller than ever, sundry great ships overspiring her 
from close without. She was already a nightmare of 
disorder; and the wharf alongside was piled with a 
world of casks, and cases, and tins, and tools, and coils 
of rope, and miniature barrels of giant powder, such as 
it seemed no human ingenuity could stuff on board of 
her. Johnson was in the waist, in a red shirt and 
dungaree trousers, his eye kindled with activity. With 


180 THE WRECKER 


him I exchanged a word or two; and then stepped aft 
along the narrow alleyway between the house and 
the rail, and down the companion to the main cabin, 
where the captain sat with the commissioner at wine. 

I gazed with disaffection at the little box which 
for many a day I was to call home. On the starboard 
was a stateroom for the captain; on the port, a pair 
of frowsy berths, one over the other, and abutting 
astern upon the side of an unsavoury cupboard. The 
walls were yellow and damp, the floor black and 
greasy; there was a prodigious litter of straw, old news- 
papers, and broken packing-cases; and by way of orna- 
ment, only a glass-rack, a thermometer presented 
“with compliments” of some advertising whisky-dealer, 
and a swinging lamp. It was hard to foresee that, be- 
fore a week was up, I should regard that cabin as 
cheerful, lightsome, airy, and even spacious. 

I was presented to the commissioner, and to a young 
friend of his whom he had brought with him for the 
purpose (apparently) of smoking cigars; and after we 
had pledged one another in a glass of Californian port, 
a trifle sweet and sticky for a morning beverage, the 
functionary spread his papers on the table, and the 
hands were summoned. Down they trooped, accord- 
ingly, into the cabin; and stood eyeing the ceiling or 
the floor, the picture of sheepish embarrassment, and 
with a common air of wanting to expectorate and not 
quite daring. In admirable contrast, stood the Chinese 
cook, easy, dignified, set apart by spotless raiment, 
the hidalgo of the seas. 

I daresay you never had occasion to assist at the 
farce which followed. Our shipping laws in the United 
States (thanks to the inimitable Dana) are con- 
ceived in a spirit of paternal stringency, and proceed 
throughout on the hypothesis that poor Jack is an 
imbecile, and the other parties to the contract, rogues 
and ruffians. A long and wordy paper of precautions, 
a fo’e’s’le bill of rights, must be. read separately to 
each man. I had now the benefit of hearing it five 


JIM AND I TAKE DIFFERENT WAYS 181 


times in brisk succession; and you would suppose I 
Was acquainted with its contents. But the commis- 
sioner (worthy man) spends his days in doing little 
else; and when we bear in mind the parallel case of the 
irreverent curate, we need not be surprised that he 
took the passage tempo prestissimo, in one roulade of 
gabble—that I, with the trained attention of an edu- 
cated man, could gather but a fraction of its import— 
and the sailors nothing. No profanity in giving orders, 
no sheath-knives, Midway Island and any other port 
the master may direct, not to exceed six calendar 
months, and to this port to be paid off: so it seemed 
to run, with surprising verbiage; so ended. And with 
the end, the commissioner, in each case, fetched a deep 
breath, "resumed his natural voice, afta proceeded to 
business. “Now, my man,” he would say, “you ship 
A. B. at so many dollars. American gold coin. Sign 
your name here, if you have one, and can write.” 
Whereupon, and the name (with infinite hard breath- 
ing) being signed, the commissioner would proceed to 
fill in the man’s appearance, height, etce., on the official 
form. In this task of literary portraiture he seemed 
to rely wholly upon temperament; for I could not 
perceive him to cast one glance on any of his models. 
He was assisted, however, by a running commentary 
from the captain: “Hair blue and eyes red, nose five 
foot seven, and stature broken”—yjests as old, presum- 
ably, as the American marine; and, like the similar 
pleasantries of the billiard board, perennially relished. 
The highest note of humour was reached in the case of 
the Chinese cook, who was shipped under the name 
of “One Lung,” to the sound of his own protests and 
the self-approving chuckles of the functionary. 

“Now, Captain,” said the latter, when the men were 
gone, and he had bundled up his papers, “the law re- 
quires | you to carry a slop-chest and a chest of medi- 
cines.’ 

“T guess I know that,” said Nares. 


182 THE WRECKER 


“T guess you do,” returned the commissioner, and 
helped himself to port. 

But when he was gone, I appealed to Nares on the 
same subject, for I was well aware we carried none of 
these provisions. 

“Well,” drawled Nares, “‘there’s sixty pounds of 
nigger-head on the quay, isn’t there? and twenty 
pounds of salts; and I never travel without some pain- 
killer in my gripsack.” 

As a matter of fact, we were richer. The captain had 
the usual sailor’s provision of quack medicines, with 
which, in the usual sailor fashion, he would daily drug 
himself, displaying an extreme inconsistency, and flit- 
ting from Kennedy’s Red Discovery to Kennedy’s 
White, and from Hood’s Sarsaparilla to Mother Seigel’s 
Syrup. And there were, besides, some mildewed and 
half-empty bottles, the labels obliterated, over which 
Nares would sometimes sniff and speculate. “Seems to 
smell like diarrhcea stuff,’ he would remark. ‘I wish’t 
I knew, and I would try it.” But the slop-chest was 
indeed represented by the plugs of nigger-head, and 
nothing else. Thus paternal laws are made, thus they 
are evaded; and the schooner put to sea, like plenty 
of her neighbours, liable to a fine of six hundred dollars. 

This characteristic scene, which has delayed me over- 
long, was but a moment in that day of exercise and 
agitation. To fit out a schooner for sea, and impro-. 
vise a marriage between dawn and dusk, involves 
heroic effort. All day Jim and I ran, and tramped, and 

laughed, and came near crying, and fell in sudden 
anxious consultations, and were sped (with a prepared 
sarcasm on our lips) to some fallacious milliner, and 
made dashes to the schooner and John Smith’s, and 
at every second corner were reminded (by our own 
huge posters) of our desperate estate. Between whiles, 
I had found the time to hover at some half-a-dozen 
jewellers’ windows; and my present, thus intemperately 
chosen, was graciously accepted. I believe, indeed, 
that was the last (though not the least) of my 





JIM AND I TAKE DIFFERENT WAYS 183 


concerns, before the old minister, shabby and benign, 
was routed from his house and led to the office like a 
performing poodle; and there, in the growing dusk, 
under the cold glitter of Thirteen Star, two hundred 
strong, and beside the garish glories of the agricultural 
engine, Mamie and Jim were made one. The scene 
was incongruous, but the business pretty, whimsical, 
and affecting; the typewriters with such kindly faces 
and fine posies, Mamie so demure, and Jim—how shall 
I describe that poor, transfigured Jim? He began by 
taking the minister aside to the far end of the office. 
I knew not what he said, but I have reason to believe 
he was protesting his unfitness; for he wept as he 
said it: and the old minister, himself genuinely moved, 
was heard to console and encourage him, and at one 
time to use this expression: “I assure you, Mr. 
Pinkerton, there are not many who can say so much”— 
from which I gathered that my friend had tempered 
his self-accusations with at least one legitimate boast. 
From this ghostly counselling, Jim turned to me;“and 
though he never got beyond the explosive utterance of 
my name and one fierce handgrip, communicated some 
of his own emotion, like a charge of electricity, to his 
best man. We stood up to the ceremony at last, in 
a general and kindly discomposure. Jim was all 
abroad; and the divine himself betrayed his sympathy 
in voice and demeanour, and concluded with a fatherly 
allocution, in which he congratulated Mamie (calling 
her “my dear”) upon the fortune of an excellent hus- 
band, and protested he had rarely married a more 
interesting couple. At this-stage, like a glory descend- 
ing, there was handed in, ex machina, the card of 
Douglas B. Longhurst, with congratulations and four 
dozen Perrier-Jouet. A bottle was opened; and the 
minister pledged the bride, and the bridesmaids 
simpered and tasted, and I made a speech with airy 
baechanalianism, glass in hand. But poor Jim must 
leave the wine untasted. ‘Don’t touch it,” I had found 
the opportunity to whisper; “in your state, it will make 


184 THE WRECKER 


you as drunk as a fiddler.” And Jim had wrung my 
hand, with a “God bless you, Loudon!—saved me 
again!” 

Hard following upon this, the supper passed off at 
Frank’s with somewhat tremulous gaiety. And thence, 
with one half of the Perrier-Jouet—I would accept no 
more—we voyaged in a hack to the Norah Creina. 

“What a dear little ship!” cried Mamie, as our 
miniature craft was pointed out to her. And then, on 
second thought, she turned to the best man. “And how 
brave you must be, Mr. Dodd,” she cried, “‘to go in that 
tiny thing so far upon the ocean!” And I perceived 
I had risen in the lady’s estimation. 

The “dear little ship” presented a horrid picture of 
confusion, and its occupants of weariness and ill- 
humor. From the cabin the cook was storing tins into 
the lazarette, and the four hands, sweaty and sullen, 
were passing them from one to another from the waist. 
Johnson was three parts asleep over the table; and in 
his bunk, in his own cabin, the captain sourly chewed 
and puffed at a cigar. 

“See here,’ he said, rising; “you'll be sorry you 
came. We can’t stop work if we’re to get away to- 
morrow. <A ship getting ready for sea is no place for 
people, anyway. You'll only interrupt my men.” 

I was on the point of answering something tart; but 
Jim, who was ‘acquainted with the breed, as he was 
with most things that had a bearing on affairs, made 
haste to pour in oil. 

“Captain,” he said, “I know we're a nuisance here, 
and that you’ve had a rougl: time. But all we want is 
that you should drink one glass of wine with us, 
Perrier—Jouet, from Longhurst, on the occasion of my 
marriage, and Loudon’s—Mr. Dodd’s—departure.” 

“Well, it’s your lookout,” said Nares. “I don’t mind 
half an hour. Spell, O!” he added to the men; “go 
and kick your heels for half an hour, and then you 
ean turn to again a trifle livelier. Johnson, see if you 
ean wipe off that chair for the lady.” ae 


¥ 
< 4 


JIM AND I TAKE DIFFERENT WAYS 185 


His tone was no more gracious than his language; 
but when Mamie had turned upon him the soft fire of 
her eyes, and informed him that he was the first sea- 
captain she had ever met, “except captains of steamers, 
of course’—she so qualified the statement—and had 
expressed a lively sense of his courage, and perhaps 
implied (for I suppose the arts of ladies are the same 
as those of men) a modest consciousness of his good 
looks, our bear began insensibly to soften; and it was 
already part as an apology, although still with unaf- 
fected heat of temper, that he volunteered some sketch 
of his annoyances. 

“A pretty mess we’ve had,” said he. “Half the stores 
were wrong; I’ll wring John Smith’s neck for him 


some of these days. Then two newspaper beasts came 


down, and tried to raise copy out of me, till I threat- 
ened them with the first thing handy; and then some 
kind of missionary bug, wanting to work his passage 
to Raiatea or somewhere. I told him I would take 
him off the wharf with the butt end of my boot and 
he went away cursing. This vessel’s been depreciated 
by the look of him.” 

While the captain spoke, with his strange, humorous, 
arrogant abruptness, I observed Jim to be sizing him 


_ up, like a thing at once quaint and familiar, and with 


a scrutiny that was both curious and knowing. 

“One word, dear boy,” he said, turning suddenly to 
me. And when he had drawn me on deck, “That man,” 
says he, “will carry sail till your hair grows white; but 
never you let on, never breathe a word. I know his 
line: he’ll die before he’ll take advice; and if you get 
his back up, he’ll run you right under. I don’t often 
jam in my advice, Loudon; and when I do, it means 
I’m thoroughly posted.” 

The little party in the cabin, so disastrously begun, 
finished, under the mellowing influence of wine and 
woman, in excellent feeling and with some hilarity. 
Mamie, in a plush Gainsborough hat and a gown of 
wine-coloured silk, sat, an apparent queen, among her 


a ae 
pers 
a 


186 THE WRECKER 


rude surroundings and companions. The dusky litter 
of the cabin set off her radiant trimness: tarry Johnson 
was a foil to her fair beauty; she glowed in that poor 
place, fair as a star; until even I, who was not usually 
of her admirers, caught a spark of admiration; and 
even the captain, who was in no courtly humor, pro- 
posed that the scene should be commemorated by my 
pencil. It was the last act of the evening. Hurricdly 
as I went about my task, the half-hour had lengthened 
out to more than three before it was completed: Mamie 
in full value, the rest of the party figuring in outline 
only, and the artist himself introduced in a back 
view, which was pronounced a likeness. But it was to 
Mamie that I devoted the best of my attention; and it 
was with her I made my chief success. 

“Ol!” she cried, ‘am I really like that? No wonder 
Jim . . .” She paused. ‘Why it’s just as lovely as 
he’s good!” she cried: an epigram which was appreci- 
ated, and repeated as we made our salutations, and 
called out after the retreating couple as they passed 
away under the lamplight on the wharf. 

Thus it was that our farewells were smuggled through 
under an ambuscade of laughter, and the parting over 
ere I knew it was begun. The figures vanished, the 
steps died away along the silent city front; on board, 
_the men had returned to their labours, the captain to 
his solitary cigar, and after that long and complex day 
of business and emotion, I was at last alone and free. 
It was, perhaps, chiefly fatigue that made my heart so 
heavy. I leaned at least upon the house, and stared 
at the foggy heaven, or over the rail at the wavering 
reflection of the lamps, like a man that was quite done 
with hope and would have welcomed the asylum of 
the grave. And all at once, as I thus stood, the Crty 
of Pekin flashed into my mind, racing her thirteen 
knots for Honolulu, with the hated Trent—perhaps 
with the mysterious Goddedaal—on board; and with 
the thought the blood leaped and careered through all 
my body. It seemed no chase at all; it seemed we had 





JIM AND I TAKE DIFFERENT WAYS 187 


no chance, as we lay there bound to iron pillars, and 
fooling away the precious moments over tins of beans. 
“Let them get there first!” I thought. “Let them! We 
can’t be long behind.”’ And from that moment, I date 
myself a man of a rounded experience: nothing had 
lacked but this, that I should entertain and welcome 
the grim thought of bloodshed. 

It was long before the toil remitted in the pie and 
it was worth my while to go to bed; long after that, 
before sleep favoured me; and scarce a moment later 
(or so it seemed) when I was recalled to consciousness 
by bawling men and the Jar of straining hawsers. 

The schooner was cast off before I got on deck. In 
the misty obscurity of the first dawn, I saw the tug 
heading us with glowing fires and blowing smoke, and 
heard her beat the roughened waters of the bay. Be- 
side us, on her flock of hills, the lighted city towered 
up and stood swollen in the raw fog. It was strange 
to see her burn on thus wastefully, with half-quenched 
luminaries, when the dawn was already grown strong 
enough to show me, and to suffer me to recognize, a 
solitary figure standing on the piles. 

Or was it really the eye, and not rather the heart, 
that identified that shadow in the dusk, among the 
-shoreside lamps? I know not. It was Jim, at least; 
Jim, come for a last look; and we had but time to wave 
a valedictory gesture and exchange a wordless cry. 
This was our second parting, and our capacities were 
now reversed. It was mine to play the Argonaut, to 
speed affairs, to plan and to accomplish—if need were, 
at the price of life; it was his to sit at home, to study 
the calendar, and ‘to wait. I knew besides another 
thing that gave me joy. I knew that my friend had 
succeeded in my education; that the romance of busi- 
ness, if our fantastic purchase merited the name, had 
at last stirred my dilettante nature; and, as we swept 
under cloudy Tamalpais and through the roaring nar- 
rows of the bay, the Yankee blood sang in my Veins 
with suspense and exultation. 





188 THE WRECKER 


Outside the heads, as if to meet my desire, we found 
it blowing fresh from the north-east. No time had 
been lost. The sun was not yet up before the tug cast 
off the hawser, gave us a salute of three whistles, and 
turned homeward toward the coast, which now began 
to gleam along its margin with the earliest rays of 
day. There was no other ship in view when the Norah 
Creina, lying over under all plain sail, began her long 
and lonely voyage to the wreck, 


CHAPTER XII 
THE “‘NORAH CREINA” 


LOVE to recall the glad monotony of a Pacific voy- 
age, when the trades are not stinted, and the ship, 
day aiter day, goes free. The mountain scenery of 
trade-wind clouds, watched (and in my case painted) 
under every vicissitude of light—blotting stars, with- 
ering in the moon’s glory, barring the scarlet eve, lying 
across the dawn collapsed into the unfeatured morn- 
ing bank, or at noon raising their snowy summits be- 
tween the blue roof of heaven and the blue floor of 
sea; the small, busy, and deliberate world of the 
schooner, with its unfamiliar scenes, the spearing of 
dolphin from the bowsprit end, the holy war on sharks, 
the cook making bread on the main hatch; reefing 
down before a violent squall, with the men hanging out 
on the foot-ropes; the squall itself, the catch at the 
heart, the opened sluices of the sky; and the relief, the 
renewed loveliness of life, when all is over, the sun 
forth again, and our out-fought enemy only a blot upon 
the leeward sea. I love to recall, and would that I 
could reproduce that life, the unforgettable, the unre- 
-memberable. The memory, which shows so wise a 
backwardness in registering pain, is besides an im- 
perfect recorder of extended pleasures; and a long- 
continued well-being escapes (as it were, by its mass) 
our petty methods of commemoration. On a part of 
our life’s map there lies a roseate, undecipherable haze, 
and that is all. 
Of one thing, if I am at all to trust my own annals, 
I was delightedly conscious. Day after day, in the 


- sun-gilded cabin, the whisky-dealer’s thermometer 


189 





190 THE WRECKER 


stood at 84°. Day after day, the air had the same in- 
describable liveliness and sweetness, soft and nimble, 
and cool as the cheek of health. Day after day, the 
sun flamed; night after night the moon beaconed, or 
the stars paraded their lustrous regiment. I was aware 
of a spiritual change, or perhaps, rather a molecular 
reconstitution. My bones were sweeter to me. I had 
come to my own climate, and looked back with pity 
on those damp and wintry zones, miscalled the tem- 
perate. 

“Two years of this, and comfortable quarters to live 
in, kind of shake the grit out of a man,” the captain 
remarked; “can’t make out to be happy anywhere else. 
A townie of mine was lost down this way, in a coalship 
that took fire at sea. He struck the beach somewhere 
in the Navigators; and he wrote to me that when he 
left the place, it would be feet first. He’s well off, too, 
and his father owns some coasting craft Down East; 
but Billy prefers the beach, and hot rolls off the bread- 
truit trees.” 

A voice told me I was on the same track as Billy. 
But when was this? Our outward track in the Norah 
Creina lay well to the northward; and perhaps it is 
but the impression of a few pet days which I have un- 
consciously spread longer, or perhaps the feeling grew 
upon me later, in the run to Honolulu. One thing I 
* am-sure: it was before I had ever seen an island worthy 
of the name that I must date my loyalty to the South 
Seas. The blank sea itself grew desirable under such 
skies: and wherever the trade-wind blows, I know no 
better country than a schooner’s deck. 

But for the tugging anxiety as to the journey’s end, 
the journey itself must thus have counted for the best 
of holidays. My physical well-being was over-proof; 
effects of sea and sky kept me forever busy with my 
pencil; and I had no lack of intellectual exercise of a 
different order in the study of my inconsistent friend, 
the captain. I call him friend, here on the threshold; 
but that is to look well ahead. At first, I was too 


a0 
peat. 45 
a a 


THE “NORAH CREINA” 191 


much horrified by what I considered his barbarities, 
too much puzzled by his shifting humours, and too 
frequently annoyed by his small vanities, to regard 
him otherwise than as the cross of my existence... It 
was only by degrees, in his rare hours of pleasantness, 
when he forgot (and made me forget) the weaknesses 
to which he was so prone, that he won me to a kind of 
unconsenting fondness. Lastly, the faults were all em- 
braced in a more generous view: I saw them in their 
place, like discords in a musical progression; and ac- 
cepted them and found them picturesque, as we accept 
and admire, in the habitable face of nature, the smoky 
head of the volcano or the pernicious thicket of the 
swamp. , 
He was come of good people Down East, and had 
the beginnings of a thorough education. His temper 


had been ungovernable from the first; and it is likely 


the defect was inherited, and the blame of the rupture 
not entirely his. He ran away at least to sea; suf- 


_ fered horrible maltreatment, which seemed to have 


rather hardened than enlightened him; ran away again 
to shore in a South American port; proved his capacity 
and made money, although still a child; fell among 
thieves and was robbed; worked back a passage to 


the States, and knocked one morning at the door of 


an old lady whose orchard he had often robbed. The 
introduction appears insufficient; but Nares knew what 
he was doing. The sight of her old neighbourly dep- 
redator shivering at the door in tatters, the very oddity 
of his appeal, touched a soft spot in the spinster’s 
heart. “I always had a fancy for the old lady,” Nares 
said, “even when she used to stampede me out of 
the orchard, and shake her thimble and her old curls 
at me out of the window as I was going by; I always 
thought she was a kind of pleasant old girl. Well, 
when she came to the door that morning, I told her 
so, and that I was stone broke and she took me right 
in, and fetched out the pie.” She clothed him, taught 
him, had him to sea again in better shape, welcomed 


192 THE WRECKER 


him to her hearth on his return from every cruise, 
and when she died, bequeathed him her possessions. 
“She was a good old girl,” he would say. “I tell you, 
Mr. Dodd, it was a queer thing to see me and the 
old lady talking a pasear in the garden, and the old 
man scowling at us over the pickets. She lived right 
next door to the old man, and I guess that’s just what 
took me there. I wanted him to know that I was 
badly beat, you see, and would rather go to the devil 
than to him. What made the dig harder, he had quar- 
relled with the old lady about me and the orchard: 
I guess that made him rage. Yes, I was a beast when 
I was young. But I was always pretty good to the 
old lady.” Since then he had prospered, not unevent- 
fully, in his profession; the old lady’s money had fallen 
in during the voyage of the Gleaner, and he was now, 
as soon as the smoke of that engagement cleared away, 
secure of his ship. I suppose he was about thirty: 
a powerful, active man, with a blue eye, a thick head 
of hair about the colour of oakum and growing low 
over the brow; clean-shaved and lean about the jaw; a 
good singer; a good performer on that sea-instrument, 
the accordion; a quick observer, a close reasoner; when 
he pleased, of a really elegant address; and when he 
chose, the greatest brute upon the seas. 

His usage of the men, his hazing, his bullying, his 
_ perpetual fault-finding for no cause, his perpetual and 
brutal sarcasm, might have raised a mutiny in a 
slave galley. Suppose the steerman’s eye to have wan- 
dered: ‘You 2 , little mutton-faced Dutch- 
man,’ Nares would bawl; “you want a booting to keep 
you on your course. I know a little city-front slush 
when I see one. Just you glue your eye to that com- 
pass, or I’ll show you round the vessel at the butt-end 
of my boot.” Or suppose a hand to linger aft, whither 
he had perhaps been summoned not a minute before. 
“Mr. Daniells, will you oblige me by stepping clear of 
that main sheet?” the captain might begin, with trucu- 
lent courtesy. “Thank you. And perhaps you'll be 








a 
4 
en te a 
ee a Ge 


a 


THE “NORAH CREINA” 193 


so kind as to tell me what the hell you're doing on 
my quarter-deck? I want no dirt of yoursort here. Is 
there nothing for you to do? Where’s the mate? 
Don’t you set me to find work for you, or I’ll find you 
some that will keep you on your back for a fortnight.” 
Such allocutions, conceived with a perfect knowledge 
of his audience, so that every insult carried home, were 
delivered with’ a mien so menacing and an eye so 
fiercely cruel, that his unhappy subordinates shrank 
and quailed. Too often violence followed; too often I 
have heard and seen, and boiled at the cowardly ag- 
gression; and the victim, his hands bound by law, has 
risen again from deck and crawled forward stupefied 
—I know not what passion of revenge in his wronged 
heart. 

It seems strange I should have grown to like this 
tyrant. It may even seem strange that I should have 
stood by and suffered his excesses to proceed. But I 
was not quite such a chicken as to interfere in public; 
for I would rather have a man or two mishandled than 
one half of us butchered in a mutiny and the rest 
suffer on the gallows. And in private, I was unceasing 
in my protests. 

“Captain,’ I once said to him, appealing to his 
patriotism, which was of a hardy quality, “this is no 
way to treat American seamen. You don’t call it 
American to treat men like dogs?” 

“Americans?” he said grimly. “Do you call these 


Dutchmen and Scattermouches’ Americans? I’ve been 


fourteen years to sea, all but one trip under American 
colours, and I’ve never laid eye on an American fore- 
mast hand. There used to be such things in the old 
days, when thirty-five dollars were the wages out of 
Boston; and then you could see ships handled and run 
the way they want to be. But that’s all past and 
gone; and nowadays the only thing that flies in an 


1In sea-lingo (Pacific) Dutchman includes all Teutons and 


_ folk from the basin of the Baltic: Scattermouch, all Latins and 


~ 


q 


Levantines. 


4 


194 THE WRECKER 


American ship is a belaying-pin. You don’t know; you 
haven’t a guess. How would you like to go on deck 
for your middle watch, fourteen months on end, with 
all your duty to do and every one’s life depending on 
you, and expect to get a knife ripped into you as you 
come out of your stateroom, or be sandbagged as you 
pass the boat, or get tripped into the hold, if the 
hatches are off in fine weather? That kind of shakes 
the starch out of the brotherly love and New Jerusalem 
business. You go through the mill, and you’ll have 
a bigger grudge against every old shellback that dirties 
his plate in the three oceans, than the Bank of Cal- 
ifornia could settle up. No; it has an ugly look to it, 
but the only way to run a ship is to make yourself a 
terror.” 

“Come, captain,” said I, “there are degrees in every- 
thing. You know American ships have a bad name; 
you know perfectly well if it wasn’t for the high wage 
and the good food there’s not a man would ship in one 
if he could help; and even as it is, some prefer a 
British ship, beastly food and all.” 

“O, the lime-juicers?” said he. ‘There’s plenty 
booting in lime-juicers, I guess; though.I don’t deny © 
but what some of them are soft.” And with that he 
smiled like a man recalling something. ‘Look here, 
that brings a yarn in my head,” he resumed; ‘‘and for 
the sake of the joke, I'll give myself away. It was 
in 1874, I shipped mate in the British ship Marna, 
from ’Frisco for Melbourne. She was the queerest 
craft in some ways that ever I was aboard of. The 
food was a caution; there was nothing fit to put your 
lips to—but the lime-juice, which was from the end 
bin no doubt: it used to make me sick to see the 
men’s dinners, and sorry to see my own. The old 
man was good enough, I guess; Green was his name; 
a mild, fatherly old galoot. But the hands was the 
lowest gang I ever handled; and whenever I tried to 
knock a little spirit into them, the old man took their 
part! It was Gilbert and Sullivan on the high seas; 


THE “NORAH CREINA” 195 


but you bet I wouldn’t let any man dictate to me. 
‘You give me your orders, Captain Green,’ I said, ‘and 
you'll find I’ll carry them out; that’s all you’ve got 
to say. You'll find I do my duty,’ I said; ‘how I do it 
is my lookout; and there’s no man born that’s going to 
give me lessons.’ Well, there was plenty dirt on board 
that Maria first and last. Of course, the old man put 
my back up, and, of course, he put up the crew’s; and 
I had to regular fight my way through every watch. 
The men got to hate me, so’s I would hear them grit 
their teeth when I came up. At last, one day, I saw 
a big hulking beast of a Dutchman booting the ship’s 
boy. I made one shoot of it off the house and laid 
that Dutchman out. Up he came, and I laid him out 
again. ‘Now,’ I said, ‘if there’s a kick left in you, 
just mention it, and I’ll stamp your ribs in like a 
packing-case.’ He thought better of it, and never let 
on; lay there as mild as a deacon at a funeral; and 
they took him below to reflect on his native Dutch- 
land. One night we got caught in rather a dirty thing 
about 25 south. I guess we were all asleep; for the 
first thing I knew there was the fore-royal gone. I 
ran forward, bawling blue hell; and just as I came by 
the foremast, something struck me right through the 
forearm and stuck there. I put my other hand up, 
and by George! it was the grain; the beasts had 
speared me like a porpoise. ‘Cap’n!’ I cried—‘What’s 
wrong?’ says he—‘They’ve grained me,’ says I.— 
‘Grained you?’ says he. ‘Well I’ve been looking for 
that..—‘And by God,’ I cried, ‘I want to have some 
of these beasts murdered for it!"—‘Now, Mr. Nares,’ 
says he, ‘you better go below. If I had been one of 
the men, you’d have got more than this. And I want 
no more of your language on deck. You’ve cost me 
my fore-royal already,’ says he; ‘and if you carry on, 
you'll have the three sticks out of her.’ That was old 
man Green’s idea of supporting officers. But you wait 
a bit; the cream’s coming. ‘We made Melbourne 
right enough, and the old man said: ‘Mr. Nares, you 


196 ~ THE WRECKER 


and me don’t draw together. You’re a first-rate sea- 
man, no mistake of that; but you’re the most disagree- 
able man I ever sailed with; and your language and 
your conduct to the crew I cannot stomach. I guess 
we'll separate.’ I didn’t care about the berth, you may 
be sure; but I felt kind of mean; and if he made one 
kind of stink, I thought I could make another. So I 
said I would go ashore and see how things stood; 
went, found I was all right, and came aboard again 
on the top rail— Are you getting your traps together, 
Mr. Nares?’ says the old man.—No,’ says I; ‘I don’t 
know as we’ll separate much before ’Frisco; at least,’ 
I said, ‘it’s a point for your consideration. I’m very 
willing to say good-bye to the Maria, but I don’t know 
whether you’ll care to start me out with three months’ 
wages.’ He got his money-box right away. ‘My son,’ 
says he, ‘I think it cheap at the money.’ He had me 
there.” 

It was a singular tale for a man to tell of himself; 
above all, in the midst of our discussion; but it was 
quite in character for Nares. I never made a good hit 
in our disputes, I never justly resented any act or 
speech of his, but what I found it long after carefully 
posted in his day-book and reckoned (here was the 
man’s oddity) to my credit. It was the same with 
his father, whom he had hated; he would give a sketch 
_ of the old fellow, frank and credible, and yet so hon- 
estly touched that it was charming. I have never met 
& man so strangely constituted: to possess a reason 
of the most equal justice, to have his nerves at the 
same time quivering with petty spite, and to act upon 
the nerves and not the reason. 

A kindred wonder in my eyes was the nature of his 
courage. There was never a braver man: he went out 
to welcome danger; an emergency (came it never so 
sudden) strung him like a tonic. And yet, upon the 
other hand, I have known none so nervous, so op- 
pressed with possibilities, looking upon the world at 
large, and the life of a sailor in particular, with so — 


THE “NORAH CREINA” 197 


constant and haggard a consideration of the ugly 
chances. All his courage was in blood, not merely cold, 
but icy with reasoned apprehension. He would lay 
our little craft under rail, and “hang on” in a squall, 
until I gave myself up for lost, and the men were 
rushing to their stations of their own accord. “There,” 
he would say, “I guess there’s not a man on board 
would have hung on as long as I did that time; they'll 
have to give up thinking me no schooner sailor. I 
guess I can shave just as near capsizing as any other 
captain of this vessel, drunk or sober.” And then he 
would fall to repining and wishing himself well out of 
the enterprise, and dilate on the peril of the seas, the 
particular dangers of the schooner rig, which he ab- 
horred, the various ways in which we might go to 
the bottom, and the prodigious fleet of ships that have 
sailed out in the course of history, dwindled from the 
eyes of watchers, and returned no more. “Well,” he 
would wind up, “I guess it don’t much matter. I 
can’t see what any one wants to live for, anyway. If 
I could get into some one else’s apple-tree, and be 
about twelve years old, and just stick the way I was, 
eating stolen apples, I won’t say. But there’s no sense 
to this grown-up business—sailorising, politics, the 
piety mill, and all the rest of it. Good clean drowning 
is good enough for me.” It is hard to imagine any 
more depressing talk for a poor landsman on a dirty 
night; it is hard to imagine anything less sailor-like 
(as sailors are supposed to be and generally are) than 
this persistent harping on the minor. 

But I was to see more of the man’s gloomy constancy 
ere the cruise was at an end. 

On the morning of the seventeenth day I came on 
deck, to find the schooner under double reefs, and fly- 
ing rather wild before a heavy run of sea. Snoring 
trades and humming sails had been our portion hither- 
to. We were already nearing the island. My re- 
strained excitement had begun to overmaster me; and 

_ for some time may only book had been the patent log 


198 THE WRECKER 


that trailed over the taffrail, and my chief interest the 
daily observation and our caterpillar progress across 
the chart. My first glance, which was at the compass, 
and my second, which was at the log, were all that 
I could wish. We lay our course; we had been doing 
over eight since nine the night before; and I drew a 
heavy breath of satisfaction. And then I know not 
what odd and wintry appearance of the sea and sky 
knocked suddenly at my heart. I observed the 
schooner to look more than usually small, the men 
silent and studious of the weather. Nares, in one of 
his rusty humours, afforded me no shadow of a morn- 
ing salutation. He, too, seemed to observe the be- 
haviour of the ship with an intent and anxious 
scrutiny. What I liked still less, Johnson himself was 
at the wheel, which he span busily, often with a 
visible effort; and as the seas ranged up behind us, 
black and imminent, he kept casting behind him eyes 
of animal swiftness, and drawing in his neck between 
his shoulders, like a man dodging a blow. From these 
signs, I gathered that all was not exactly for the best; 
and I would have given a good handful of dollars for 
a plain answer to the questions which I dared not put. 
Had I dared, with the present danger signal in the 
captain’s face, I should only have been reminded of 
my position as supercargo—an office never touched 
upon in kindness—and advised, in a very indigestible 
manner, to go below. There was nothing for it, there- 
fore, but to entertain my vague apprehensions as best 
I should be able, until it pleased the captain to en- 
lighten me of his own accord. This he did sooner than 
I had expected; as soon, indeed, as the Chinaman had 
summoned us to breakfast, and we sat face to face 
across the narrow board. 

“See here, Mr. Dodd,’ he began, looking at me 
rather queerly, “here is a business point arisen. This 
sea’s been running up for the last two days, and now 
it’s too high for comfort. The glass is falling, the 
wind is breezing up, and I won’t say but what there’s — 


THE “NORAH CREINA” 199 


dirt in it. If I lay her to, we may have to ride out 
a gale of wind and drift God knows where—on these 
French Frigate Shoals, for instance. If I keep her as 
she goes, we’ll make that island to-morrow afternoon, 
and have the lee of it to lie under, if we can’t make 
out to run in. The point you have to figure on is, 
whether you'll take the big chances of that Captain 
Trent making the place before you, or take the risk 
of something happening. I’m to run this ship to your 
satisfaction,” he added, with an ugly sneer. ‘Well, 
here’s a point for the supercargo.” 

“Captain,” I returned, with my heart in my mouth, 
“risk is better than certain failure.” 

“Life is all risk, Mr. Dodd,’ he remarked. “But 
there’s one thing: it’s now or never; in half an hour, 
Archdeacon Gabriel couldn’t lay her to, if he came 
downstairs on purpose.” 

“All right,” said I. ‘‘Let’s run.” 

“Run goes,” said he; and with that he fell to break- 
fast, and passed half an hour in stowing away ple 
and devoutly wishing himself back in San Francisco. 

When we came on deck again, he took the wheel 
from Johnson—it appears they could trust none among 
the hands——and I stood close beside him, feeling safe 
in this proximity and tasting a fearful Joy from our 
surroundings and the consciousness of my decision. 
The breeze had already risen, and as it tore over our 
heads, it uttered at times a long hooting note that sent 
my heart into my boots. The sea pursued us without 
remission, leaping to the assault of the low rail. The 
quarter- deck was all awash, and we must close the 
companion doors. 

“And all this, if you please, for Mr. Pinkerton’s 
dollars!” the captain suddenly exclaimed. ‘There’s 
many a fine fellow gone under, Mr. Dodd, because of 
drivers like your friend. What do they care for a 
ship or two? Insured, I guess. What do they care for 
sailors’ lives alongside of a few thousand dollars? 
What they want is speed between ports, and a damned 


200 THE WRECKER 


fool of a captain that’ll drive a ship under as I’m 
doing this one. You can put in the morning asking 
why I do it.” 

I sheered off to another part of the vessel as fast as 
civility permitted. This was not at all the talk that 
I desired, nor was the train of reflection which it 
started anyway welcome. Here I was, running some 
hazard of my life, and perilling the lives of seven 
others; exactly for what end, I was now at liberty to 
ask myself. For a very large amount of a very deadly 
poison, was the obvious answer; and I thought if all 
tales were true, and I were soon to be subjected to 
cross-examination at the bar of Eternal Justice, it was 
one which would not increase my popularity with the 
court. ‘Well, never mind, Jim,” thought I. “I’m 
doing it for you.” 

Before eleven, a third reef was taken in the main- 
sail; and Johnson filled the cabin with a storm-sail 
of No. I duck and sat cross-legged on the streaming 
floor, vigorously putting it to rights with a couple of 
the hands. By dinner I had fled the deck, and sat in 
the bench corner, giddy, dumb, and stupefied with 
terror. The frightened leaps of the poor Norah Creina, 
spanking like a stag for bare existence, bruised me 
between the table and the berths. Overhead, the wild 
huntsman of the storm passed continuously in one blare 
of mingled noises; screaming wind, straining timber, 
lashing rope’s end, pounding block, and bursting sea 
contributed; and I could have thought there was at 
times another, a more piercing, a more human note, 
_ that dominated all, like the wailing of an angel; I 
could have thought I knew the angel’s name, and that 
his wings were black. It seemed incredible that any 
creature of man’s art could long endure the barbarous 
mishandling of the seas, kicked as the schooner was 
from mountain-side to mountain-side, beaten and 
blown upon and wrenched in every joint and sinew 
hke a child upon the rack. There was not a plank of 
her that did not cry aloud for merey; and as she 


Ye es 
hae 


THE “NORAH CREINA” 201 


continued to hold together, I became conscious of a 
growing sympathy with her endeavours, a growing ad- 
miration for her gallant staunchness, that amused and 
at times obliterated my terrors for myself. God bless 
every man that swung a mallet on that tiny and 
strong hull! It was not for wages only that he 
laboured, but to save men’s lives. 

All the rest of the day and all the following night, 
I sat in the corner or lay wakeful in my bunk; and 
it was only with the return of morning that a new 
phase of my alarms drove me once more on deck. A 
gloomier interval I never passed. Johnson and Nares 
steadily relieved each other at the wheel and came be- 
low. The first glance of each was at the glass, which 
he repeatedly knuckled and frowned upon; for it was 
sagging lower all the time. Then, if Johnson were the 
visitor, he would pick a snack out of the cupboard, and 
stand, braced against the table, eating it, and perhaps 
obliging me with a word or two of his hee-haw con- 
versation: how it was “a son of a gun of a cold night 
on deck, Mr. Dodd” (with a grin); how “it wasn’t no 
night for panjammers, he could tell me”; having trans- 
acted all which, he would throw himself down in his 
bunk and sleep his two hours with compunction. But 
the captain neither ate nor slept. “You there, Mr. 
Dodd?” he would say, after the obligatory visit to the 
glass. 

“Well, my son, we’re one hundred and four miles” 
(or whatever it was) “off the island, and scudding for 
all we’re’worth. We’ll make it to-morrow about four, 
or not, as the case may be. That’s the news. And 
now, Mr. Dodd, I’ve stretched a point for you; you 
can see I’m dead tired; so just you stretch away back 
to your bunk again.” And with this attempt at gen- 
iality, his teeth would settle hard down on his cigar, 
and he would pass his spell below staring and blinking 
at the cabin lamp through a cloud of tobacco smoke. 
He has told me since that he was happy, which I 
should never have divined. ‘You see,” he said, “the 


4 


202 THE WRECKER 


wind we had was never anything out of the way; but 
the sea was really nasty, the schooner wanted a lot 
of humouring, and it was clear from the glass that we 
were close to some dirt. We might be running out 
of it or we might be running right crack into it. Well, 
there’s always something sublime about a big deal 
like that; and it kind of raises a man in his own liking. 
We're a queer kind of beasts, Mr. Dodd.” 

The morning broke with sinister brightness; the air 
alarmingly transparent, the sky pure, the rim of the 
horizon clear and strong against the heavens. ‘The 
wind and the wild seas, now vastly swollen, indefati- 
gably hunted us. I stood on deck, choking with fear; 
I seemed to lose all power upon my limbs; my knees 
were as paper when she plunged into the murderous 
valleys; my heart collapsed when some black moun- 
tain fell in avalanche beside her counter, and the water, 
that was more than spray, swept round my ankles like 
a torrent. I was conscious of but one strong desire, 
to bear myself decently in my terrors, and whatever 
should happen to my life, preserve my character: as 
the captain said, we are a queer kind of beasts. 
Breakfast time came, and I made shift to swallow 
some hot tea. Then I must stagger below to take the 
time, reading the chronometer with dizzy eyes, and 
marvelling the while what value there could be in 
observations taken in a ship launched (as ours then 
was) like a missile among flying seas. The forenoon 
dragged on in a grinding monotony of peril; every 
spoke of the wheel a rash, but an obliged experiment 
—rash as a forlorn hope, needful as the leap that lands 
a fireman from a burning staircase. Noon was made; 
the captain dined on his day’s work, and I on watching 
him, and our place was entered on the chart with a 
meticulous precision which seemed to me half pitiful 
and half absurd, since the next eye to behold that sheet 
of paper might be the eye of an exploring fish. One 
o’clock came, then two; the captain gloomed and 
chafed, as he held to the coaming of the house, and, 





ce Se 


THE “NORAH CREINA” 203 


if ever I saw dormant murder in man’s eye, it was in 
a God help the hand that should have disobeyed 
im. 

Of a sudden, he turned towards the mate, who was 
doing his trick at the wheel. 

“Two points on the port bow,” I heard him gay. 
And he took the wheel himself. 

Johnson nodded, wiped his eyes with the back of his 
wet hand, watched a chance as the vessel lunged up 
hill and got to the main rigging, where he swarmed 
aloft. Up and up, I watched him go, hanging on at 
every ugly plunge, gaining with every lull of the 
schooner’s movement, until, clambering into the cross- 
trees, and clinging with one arm around the masts, 
I could see him take one comprehensive sweep of the 
south-westerly horizon. The next moment, he had slid 
down the backstay and stood on deck, with a grin, a 
nod, and a gesture of the finger that said, “Yes”; the 
next again, and he was back sweating and squirming 
at the wheel, his tired face streaming and smiling, and 
his hair and the rags and corners of his clothes lashing 
round him in the wind. 

Nares went below, fetched up his binocular, and fell 
into a silent perusal of the sea-line; I also, with my 
unaided eyesight. Little by little, in that white waste 
of water, I began to make out a quarter where the 
whiteness appeared more condensed: the sky above 
was whitish likewise, and misty like a squall; and little 
by little there thrilled upon my ears a note deeper and 
more terrible than the yelling of the gale—the long, 
thundering roll of breakers. Nares wiped his night 
glass on his sleeve and passed it to me, motioning, as 
he did so, with his hand. An endless wilderness of 
raging billows came and went and danced in the circle 
of the glass; now and then a pale corner of sky, or 
the strong line of the horizon rugged with the heads 
of waves and then of a sudden—come and gone ere 
I could fix it, with a swallow’s swiftness—one glimpse | 
of what we had come so far and paid so dear to see: 


204 THE WRECKER 


the masts and rigging of a brig pencilled on heaven, 
with an ensign streaming at the main, and the ragged 
ribbons of a topsail thrashing from the yard. Again 
and again, with toilful searching, I recalled that ap- 
parition. There was no sign of any land; the wreck 
stood between sea and sky, a thing the most isolated 
I had ever viewed; but as we drew nearer, I perceived 
her to be defended by a line of breakers which drew 
off on either hand and marked, indeed, the nearest seg- 
ment of the reef. Heavy spray hung over them like 
a smoke, some hundred feet into the air; and the sound 
of their consecutive explosions rolled like a cannonade. 

In half an hour we were close in; for perhaps as long 
again we skirted that formidable barrier towards its 
farther side; and presently the sea began insensibly to 
moderate and the ship to go more sweetly. We had 
gained the lee of the island as (for form’s sake) I may 
call that ring of foam and haze and thunder; and 
shaking out a reef, wore ship and headed for the pas- 
sage. 


CHAPTER XIII 
THE ISLAND AND THE WRECK 


| LL hands were filled with joy. It was betrayed 
in their alacrity and easy faces: Johnson smil- 
ing broadly at the wheel, Nares studying the sketch 
chart of the island with an eye at peace, and the 
hands clustered forward, eagerly talking and pointing: 
so manifest was our escape, so wonderful the attrac- 
tion of a single foot of earth after so many suns had 
set and risen on an empty sea. To add to the relief, 
besides, by one of those malicious coincidences which 
suggest for fate the image of an underbred and grin- 
ning schoolboy, we had no sooner worn ship than the 
wind began to abate. 

For myself, however, I did but exchange anxieties. 
I was no sooner out of one fear than I fell upon 
another; no sooner secure that I should myself make 

the intended haven, than I began to be convinced that 
Trent was there before me. I climbed into the rigging, 
stood on the board, and eagerly scanned that ring of 
eoral reef and bursting breaker, and the blue lagoon 
which they enclosed. The two islets within began 
to show plainly—Middle Brooks and Lower Brooks 
Island, the Directory named them: two low, bush- 
covered, rolling strips of sand, each with glittering 
beaches, each perhaps a mile or a mile and a half in 
length, running east and west, and divided by a nar- 
row channel. Over these, innumerable as maggots, 
there hovered, chattered, screamed, and clanged, mil- 
lions of twinkling sea-birds: white and black; the 
black by far the largest. With singular scintillations, 
this vortex of winged life swayed to and fro in the 


205 
7* 


206 THE WRECKER 


strong sunshine, whirled continually through itself, and 
would now and again burst asunder and scatter as 
wide as the lagoon: so that I was irresistibly reminded 
of what I had read of nebular convulsions. A thin 
cloud overspread the area of the reef and the adjacent 
sea—the dust, as I could not but fancy, of earlier ex- 
plosions. And a little apart, there was yet another 
focus of centrifugal and centripetal flight, where, hard 
by the deafening line of breakers, her sails (all but 
the tattered topsail) snugly furled down, and the red 
rag that marks Old England on the seas beating, union 
down, at the main—the Flying Scud, the fruit of so 
many toilers, a recollection in so many lives of men, 
whose tall spars had been mirrored in the remotest 
corners of the sea—lay stationary at last and for ever, 
in the first stage of naval dissolution. Towards her, 
the taut Norah Creina, vulture-wise, wriggled to wind- 
ward: come from so far to pick her bones. And, look 
as I pleased, there was no other presence of man or 
of man’s handiwork; no Honolulu schooner lay there 
crowded with armed rivals, no smoke rose from the 
fire at which I fancied Trent cooking a meal of sea- 
birds. It seemed, after all, we were in time, and I 
drew a mighty breath. 

I had not arrived at this reviving certainty before 
the breakers were already close aboard, the leadsman 
at his station, and the captain posted in the fore 
cross-trees to con us through the coral lumps of the 
lagoon. AII circumstances were in our favour, the light 
behind, the sun low, the wind still fresh and steady, 
and the tide about the turn. A moment later we shot 
at racing speed betwixt two pier heads of broken 
water; the lead began to be cast, the captain to bawl 
down his anxious directions, the schooner to tack and 
dodge among the scattered dangers of the lagoon; and 
at one bell in the first dog watch, we had come to 
our anchor off the north-east end of Middle Brooks 
Island, in five fathoms water. The sails were gasketted 
and covered, the boats emptied of the miscellaneous 







7 Pi * 


THE ISLAND AND THE WRECK 207 


stores and odds and ends of sea-furniture that ac- 
cumulate in the course of a voyage, the kedge sent 
ashore, and the decks tidied down: a good three- 
quarters of an hour’s work, during which I raged about 
the deck like a man with a strong toothache. The 
transition from the wild sea to the comparative im- 
mobility of the lagoon had wrought strange distress 
among my nerves: I could not hold still whether in 
hand or foot; the slowness of the men, tired as dogs 
alter our rough experience outside, irritated me like 
something personal; and the irrational screaming of the 
seabirds saddened me like a dirge. It was a relief 
when, with Nares, and a couple of hands, I might drop 
into the boat and move off at last for the Flying Scud. 

“She looks kind of pitiful, don’t she?” observed the 
captain, nodding towards the wreck, from which we 
were separated by some half a mile. “Looks as if she 
didn’t like her berth, and Captain Trent had used her 
badly. Give her ginger, boys!” he added to the hands, 
“and you can all have shore liberty to-night to see 
the birds and paint the town red.” 

We all laughed at the pleasantry, and the boat 
skimmed the faster over the rippling face of the lagoon. 
The Flying Scud would have seemed small enough be- 
side the wharves of San Francisco, but she was some 
thrice the size of the Norah Creina, which had been so 
long our continent; and as we craned up at her wall- 
sides, she impressed us with a mountain magnitude. 
She lay head to the reef, where the huge blue wall of 
the rollers was for ever ranging up and crumbling 
down; and to gain her starboard side, we must pass 
below the stern. The rudder was hard aport, and we 
could read the legend: 


FLYING SCUD 
HULL 


On the other side, about the break of the poop, some 
half a fathom of rope ladder trailed over the rail, and 
by this we made our entrance. 


208 THE WRECKER 


She was a roomy ship inside, with a raised poop 
standing some three feet higher than the deck, and 
a small forward house, for the men’s bunks and the 
galley, just abaft the foremast. There was one boat 
on the house, and another and larger one, in beds on 
deck, on either hand of it. She had been painted 
white, with tropical economy, outside and in; and we 
found, later on, that the stanchions of the rail, hoops 
of the scuttlebutt, etc., were picked out with green. At 
that time, however, when we first stepped aboard, all 
was hidden under the droppings of innumerable sea- 
birds. 

The birds themselves gyrated and screamed mean- 
while among the rigging; and when we looked into the 
galley, their outrush drove us back. Savage-looking 
fowl they were, savagely beaked, and some of the 
black ones great as eagles. Half-buried in the slush, 
we were aware of a litter of kegs in the waist; and 
these, on being somewhat cleaned, proved to be water 
beakers. and quarter casks of mess beef with some 
colonial brand, doubtless collected there before the 
Tempest hove in sight, and while Trent and his men 
had no better expectation than to strike for Honolulu 
in the boats. Nothing else was notable on deck, save 
_ where the loose topsail had played some havoe with 

the rigging, and there hung, and swayed, and sang in 
the declining wind, a raffle of intorted cordage. 

With a shyness that was almost awe, Nare and I 
descended the companion. The stair turned upon it- 
self and landed us just forward of a thwart-ship bulk- 
head that cut the poop in.two. The fore part formed 
a kind of miscellaneous storeroom, with a double- 
bunked division for the cook (as Nares supposed) and — 
second-mate. The after part contained, in the midst, — 
the main cabin, running in a kind of bow into the 
curvature of the stern; on the port side, a pantry — 
opening forward and a stateroom for the mate; and on — 
the starboard, the captain’s berth and water-closet. 
Into these we did but glance: the main cabin holding 





THE ISLAND AND THE WRECK 209 


us. It was dark, for the sea-birds had obscured the 


skylight with their droppings; it smelt rank and fusty; 


and it was beset with a loud swarm of flies that beat 
continually in our faces. Supposing them close at- 
tendants upon man and his broken meat, I marvelled 
how they had found their way to Midway reef; it 
was sure at least some vessel must have brought them, 
and that long ago, for they had multiplied exceedingly. 
Part of the floor was strewn with a confusion of 
clothes, books, nautical instruments, odds and ends of 
finery, and such trash as might be expected from the 
turning out of several seamen’s chests, upon a sudden 
emergency and after a long cruise. It was strange in 
that dim cabin, quivering with the near thunder of the 
breakers and pierced with the screaming of the fowls, 
to turn over so many things that other men had cov- 
eted, and prized, and worn on their warm bodies— 
frayed old underclothing, pyjamas of strange design, 
duck suits in every stage of rustiness, oilskins, pilot 
coats, bottles of scent, embroidered shirts, jackets of 
pongee silk—clothes for the night watch at sea or the 
day ashore in the hotel verandah; and mingled among 
these, books, cigars, fancy pipes, quantities of tobacco, 


many keys, a rusty pistol, and a sprinkling of cheap 


curiosities—Benares brass, Chinese jars and pictures, 
and bottles of odd shells in cotton, each designed no 
doubt for somebody at home—perhaps in Hull, of 


which Trent had been a native and his ship a citizen. 


Thence we turned our attention to the table, which 
stood spread, as if for a meal, with stout ship’s crock- 
ery and the remains of food—a pot of marmalade, 
dregs of coffee in the mugs, unrecognisable remains of 
foods, bread, some toast, and a tin of condensed milk. 
The table-cloth, originally of a red-colour, was stained 
a dark brown at the captain’s end, apparently with 
coffee; at the other end, it had been folded back, and 
a pen and ink-pot stood on the bare table. Stools were 
here and there about the table, irregularly placed, as 
though the meal had been finished and the men 


i 


210 THE WRECKER 


smoking and chatting; and one of the stools lay on the 
floor, broken. 

“See! they were writing up the log,” said Nares, 
pointing to the ink-bottle. “Caught napping, as usual. 
I wonder if there ever was a captain yet that lost a 
ship with his log-book up to date? He generally has 
about a month to fill up on a clean break, like Charles 
Dickens and his serial novels—What a regular, lime- 
juicer spread!” he added contemptuously. ‘Marma- 
ean toast for the old man! Nasty, slovenly 
pigs!” 

There was something in this criticism of the absent 
that jarred upon my feelings. I had no love indeed for 
Captain Trent or any of his vanished gang; but the 
desertion and decay of this once habitable cabin struck 
me hard: the death of man’s handiwork is melancholy 
like the death of man himself; and I was impressed 
with an involuntary and irrational sense of tragedy in 
my surroundings. 

“This sickens me,” I said. “Let’s go on deck and 
breathe.” 

The captain nodded. “It 7s kind of lonely, isn’t it?” 
he said. “But I can’t go up till I get the code signals. 
I want to run up ‘Got Left’ or something, just to 
brighten up this island home. Captain Trent hasn’t 
been here yet, but he’ll drop in before long: and it'll 
cheer him up to see a signal on the brig.” 

“Tsn’t there some official expression we could use?” 
I asked, vastly taken by the fancy. “ ‘Sold for the 
benefit of the underwriters: for further particulars ap- 
ply to J. Pinkerton, Montana Block, 8S. F.’” 3 

“Well,” returned Nares, “I won’t say but what an 
old navy quartermaster might telegraph all that, if 
you gave him a day to do it in and a pound of © 
tobacco for himself. But it’s above my register. I 
must try something short and sweet: KB, urgent — 
signal, ‘Heave all aback’; or LM, urgent, “The berth © 
you’re now in is not safe’; or what do you say to 





THE ISLAND AND THE WRECK 211 


PQH?—‘Tell my owners the ship answers remarkably 
well.’ ” 

“It’s premature,” I replied; “but it seems calculated 
to give pain to Trent. PQH for me.” 

The flags were found in Trent’s cabin, neatly stored 
behind a lettered grating; Nares chose what he re- 
quired and (I following) returned on deck, where the 
sun had already dipped, and the dusk was coming. 

“Here! don’t touch that, you fool!”’ shouted the cap- 
tain to one of the hands, who was drinking from the 
scuttle-butt. “That water’s rotten!” 

“Beg pardon, sir,” replied the man. “Tastes quite 
sweet.” 

“Let me see,” returned Nares, and he took the dipper 
and held it to his lips. “Yes, it’s all right,” he said. 
“Must have rotted and come sweet again. Queer, isn’t 
it, Mr. Dodd? ‘Though I’ve known the same on a 
Cape-Horner.”’ 

There was something in his intonation that made me 
look him in the face; he stood a little on tiptoe to look 
right and left about the ship, like a man filled with 
curiosity, and his whole expression and bearing testified 
to some suppressed excitement. 

“You don’t believe what you’re saying!” J broke out. 

“O, I don’t know but what I do!” he replied, lay- 
ing a hand upon me soothingly. ‘The thing’s very 
possible. Only, I’m bothered about something else.” 

And with that he called a hand, gave him the code 
flags, and stepped himself to the main signal halliards, 
which vibrated under the weight of the ensign over- 
head, A minute later, the American colours, which we 
had brought in the boat, replaced the English red, and 
PQH was fluttering at the fore. 

“Now, then,” said Nares, who had watched the 
breaking out of his signal with the old-maidish particu- 
larity of an American sailor, “out with those hand- 
spikes, and let’s see what water there is in the lagoon.” 

The bars were shoved home; the barbarous caco- 
phony of the clanking pump rose in the waist; and 


212 THE WRECKER 


streams of ill-smelling water gushed on deck and made 
valleys in the slab guano. Nares leaned on the rail, 
watching the steady stream of bilge as though he 
found some interest in it. 

“What is it that bothers you?” I asked. 

“Well, I'll tell you one thing shortly,” he replied. 
“But here’s another. Do you see those boats there, 
one on the house and two on the beds? Well, where is 
the boat Trent lowered when he lost the hands?” 

“Got it aboard again, I suppose,” said I. 

“Well, if you’ll tell me why!” returned the captain. 

“Then it must have been another,” I suggested. 

“She might have carried another on the main hatch, 

I won’t deny,” admitted Nares; “but I can’t see what 
she wanted with it, unless it was for the old man to 
go out and play the accordian in, on moonlight nights.” 

“Tt can’t much matter, anyway,” I reflected. 

“O, I don’t suppose it does,” said he, glancing over 
his shoulder at the spouting of the scuppers. 

“And how long are we to keep up this racket?” I 
asked. ‘We're simply pumping up the lagoon. Cap- 
tain Trent himself said she had settled down and was 
full forward.” 

“Did he?” said Nares, with a significant dryness. 
And almost as he spoke the pumps sucked, and sucked 
again, and the men. threw down their bars. “There, 
what do you make of that?” he asked. “Now, I'll tell, 
Mr. Dodd,” he went on, lowering his voice, but not © 
shifting from his easy attitude against the rail, “this 
ship is as sound as the Norah Creina. I had a guess 
of it before we came aboard, and now I know.” | 

“Tt’s not possible!” I cried. “What do you make of 
Trent?” . 

“YT don’t make anything of Trent; I don’t know © 
whether he’s a liar or only an old wife; I simply tell — 
you what’s the fact,” said Nares. “And J’ll tell you — 
something more,” he added: “I’ve taken the ground ~ 
myself in deep-water vessels; I know what I’m saying; 
and I say that, when she first struck and before she 










THE ISLAND AND THE WRECK 213 


bedded down, seven or eight hours’ work would have 
got this hooker off, and there’s no man that ever went 
two years to sea but must have known it.” 

I could only utter an exclamation. 

I glanced round; the dusk was melting into early 
night; the twinkle of a lantern marked the schooner’s 
position in the distance; and our men, free from further 
labour, stood grouped together in the waist, their faces 
illuminated by their glowing pipes. 

“Why didn’t Trent get her off?” inquired the captain. 
“Why did he want to buy her back in ’Frisco for these 
fabulous sums, when he might have sailed her into the 
bay himself?” 

“Perhaps he never knew her value until then,” I 
suggested. 

“IT wish we knew her value now,” exclaimed Nares. 
“However, I don’t want to depress you; I’m sorry for 
you. Mr. Dodd; I know how bothering it must be to 
you; and the best I can say’s this: I haven’t taken 
much time getting down, and now I’m here I mean to 
work this thing in proper style. I just want to put 
your mind at rest: you shall have no trouble with 
me.” 

There was something trusty and friendly in his 
voice; and I found myself gripping hands with him, 
in that hard, short shake that means so much with 
English-speaking people. i 

“We'll do, old fellow,” said he. ‘We’ve shaken 
down into pretty good friends, you and me; and you 
won't find me working the business any the less hard 
for that. And now let’s scoot for supper.” 

After supper, with the idle curiosity of the seafarer, 
we pulled ashore in a fine moonlight, and landed on 
Middle Brooks Island. A flat beach surrounded it 
upon all sides; and the midst was occupied by a thicket 
of bushes, the highest of them scarcely five feet high, 
in which the sea-fowl lived. Through this we tried 
at first to strike; but it were easier to cross Trafalgar 
Square upon a day of demonstration than to invade 


214 THE WRECKER 


these haunts of sleeping sea-birds; the nests sank, and 
the eggs burst under footing; wings beat in our faces, 
beaks menaced our eyes, our minds were confounded 
with the screeching, and the coil spread over the island 
and mounted high into the air. 

“T guess we’ll saunter round the beach,” said Nares, 
when we had made good our retreat. 

The hands were all busy after sea-birds’ eggs, so 
there were none to follow us. Our way lay on the 
crisp sand by the margin of the water; on one side, 
the thicket from which we had been dislodged; on 
the other, the face of the lagoon, barred with a broad 
path of moonlight, and beyond that, the line, alter- 
nately dark and shining, alternately hove high and 
fallen prone, of the external breakers. The beach was 
strewn with bits of wreck and drift: some redwood and 
spruce logs, no less than two lower masts of junks, 
and the stern-post of a European ship; all of which 
we looked on with a shade of serious concern, speaking 
of the dangers of the sea and the hard case of cast- 
aways. In this sober vein we made the greater part 
of the circuit of the island; had a near view of its 
neighbour from the southern end; walked the whole 
length of the westerly side in the shadow of the thicket; 
and came forth again into the moonlight at the op- 
posite extremity. 

On our right, at the distance of about half a mile, 
the schooner lay faintly heaving at her anchors. 
About half a mile down the beach, at a spot still 
hidden from us by the thicket, an upboiling of the birds 
showed where the men were still (with sailor-like in- 
satiability) collecting eggs. And right before us, in 
a small indentation of the sand, we were aware of a 
boat lying high and dry, and right side up. 

Nares crouched back into the shadow of the bushes. 

‘What the devil’s this?” he whispered. 

“Trent,” I suggested, with a beating heart. 

‘We were damned fools to come ashore unarmed,” 
said he. “But I’ve got to know where I stand.” In 


> 


EEE a 


mn 


THE ISLAND AND THE WRECK 215 


the shadow, his face looked conspicuously white, and 
his voice betrayed a strong excitement. He took his 
boat’s whistle from his pocket. “In case I might want 
to play a tune,” said he grimly, and thrusting it be- 
tween his teeth, advanced into the moonlit open; which 
we crossed with rapid steps, looking guiltily about us 


_ as we went. Not a leaf stirred; and the boat, when 


we came up to it, offered convincing proof of long de- 
sertion. She was an eighteen-foot whaleboat of the 
ordinary type, equipped with oars and _ thole-pins. 
Two or three quarter-casks lay on the bilge amid- 
ships, one of which must have been broached, and now 
stank horribly; and these, upon examination, proved 
to bear the same New Zealand brand as the beef on 
board the wreck. 

‘Well, here’s the boat,” said I. ‘Here’s one of your 
difficulties cleared away.” 

“H’m,” said he. There was a little water in the 
bilge, and here he stooped and tasted it. 

“Fresh,” he said. “Only rain-water.” 

“You don’t object to that?” I asked. 

“No,” said he. 

“Well, then, what ails you?” I cried. 

“In plain United States, Mr. Dodd,” he returned, “a 
eeereat five ash sweeps, and a barrel of stinking 
pork.” 

“Or, in other words, the whole thing?” I com- 
mented. 

“Well, it’s this way,” he condescended to explain. 
“T’ve no use for a fourth boat at all; but a boat of 
this model tops the business. I don’t say the type’s 
not common in these waters; it’s as common as dirt; 
the traders carry them for surf-boats. But the Flying 
Scud? a deep-water tramp, who was _lime-juicing 
around between big ports, Calcutta and Rangoon and 
’Frisco and the Canton River? No: I don’t see it.” 

We were leaning over the gunwhale of the boat as 
we spoke. The captain stood nearest the bow, and 
he was idly playing with the trailing painter, when 


216 THE WRECKER 


a thought arrested him. He hauled the line in, hand 
over hand, and stared, and remained staring, at the 
end. 

“Anything wrong with it?” I asked. 

“Do you know, Mr. Dodd,” said he, in a queer voice, 
“this painter’s been cut? A sailor always seizes a 
rope’s end, but this is sliced short off with the cold | 
steel. This won’t do at all for the men,” he added. 
“Just stand by till I fix it up more natural.” 

“Any guess what it all means?” I asked. 

“Well, it means one thing,’ said he. “It means 
Trent was a liar. I guess the story of the Flying Scud 
was a sight more picturesque than he gave out.” 

Half an hour later, the whaleboat was lying astern of 
the Norah Creina; and Nares and I sought our bunks, 
silent and half bewildered by our late discoveries. 





ep ee 


CHAPTER XIV 
THE CABIN OF THE “FLYING SCUD”’ 


HE sun of the morrow had not cleared the morn- 
ing bank: the lake of the lagoon, the islets, and 
the wall of breakers now beginning to subside, still lay 
clearly pictured in the flushed obscurity of early day, 
when we stepped again upon the deck of the Flying 
Scud: Nares, myself, the mate, two of the hands, and 
one dozen bright, virgin axes, in war against that 
massive structure. I think we all drew pleasurable 
breath; so profound in man is the instinct of destruc- 
tion, so engaging is the interest of the chase. For we 
were now about to taste, in a supreme degree, the 
double joys of demolishing a toy and playing ‘Hide 
the Handkerchief”: sports from which we had all per- 
haps desisted since the days of infancy. And the 
toy we were to burst in pieces was a deep-sea ship; 
and the hidden good for which we were to hunt was a 
prodigious fortune. 

The decks were washed down, the main hatch re- 
moved, and a gun-tackle purchase rigged, before the 
boat arrived with breakfast. I had grown so suspicious 
of the wreck, that it was a positive relief to me to look 
down into the hold, and see it full, or nearly full, of 
undeniable rice packed in the Chinese fashion in 
boluses of matting. Breakfast over, Johnson and the 
hands turned to upon the cargo; while Nares and I, 
having smashed open the skylight and rigged up a 
windsail on deck, began the work of rummaging the 
cabins. . 

I must not. be expected to describe our first day’s 


. work, or (for that matter) any of the rest, in order and 
217 


218 THE WRECKER 


detail, as it occurred. Such particularity might have 
been possible for several officers and a draft of men 
from a ship of war, accompanied by an experienced 
secretary with a knowledge of shorthand. For two 
plain human beings, unaccustomed to the use of the 
‘broad-axe and consumed with an impatient greed of 
the result, the whole business melts, in the retrospect, 
into a nightmare of exertion, heat, hurry, and be- 
wilderment; sweat pouring from the face like rain, the 
scurry of rats, the choking exhalations of the bilge, 
and the throbs and splinterings of the toiling axes. I 
shall content myself with giving the cream of our dis- 
coveries in a logical rather than a temporal order; 
though the two indeed practically coincided, and we 
had finished our exploration of the cabin, before we 
could be certain of the nature of the cargo. 

Nares and I began operations by tossing up pell- 
mell through the companion, and piling in a squalid 
heap about the wheel, all clothes, personal effects, the 
crockery, the carpet, stale victuals, tins of meat, and, 
in a word, all movables from the main cabin. Thence, 
we transferred our attention to the captain’s quarters 
on the starboard side. Using the blankets for a basket, 
we sent up the books, instruments, and clothes to swell 
our growing midden on the deck; and then Nares, going 
on hands and knees, began to forage underneath the 
bed. Box after box of Manilla cigars rewarded his 
search. I took occasion to smash some of these boxes 
open, and even to guillotine the bundles of cigars; but 
quite in vain—no secret cache of opium encouraged me 
to continue. 

“T guess I’ve got hold of the dicky now!” exclaimed 
Nares, and turning ‘round from my perquisitions, I 
found he had drawn forth a heavy iron box, secured 
to the bulkhead by chain and padlock. On this he was 
now gazing, not with the triumph that instantly in- 
flamed my own bosom, but with a somewhat foolish 
appearance of surprise. 


—— 


“By George, we have it now!” I cried, and would . 





THE CABIN OF THE “FLYING SCUD” 219 


have shaken hands with my companion; but he did not 
see, or would not accept, the salutation. 

“Let’s see what’s in it first,” he remarked, dryly. 
And he adjusted the box upon its side, and with some 
blows of an axe burst the lock open. I threw myself 
beside him, as he replaced the box on its bottom and 
removed the lid. I cannot tell what I expected; a 
million’s worth of diamonds might perhaps have 
pleased me; my cheeks burned, my heart throbbed to 
bursting; and lo! there was disclosed but a trayful of 
papers, neatly taped, and a cheque-book of the cus- 
tomary pattern. I made a snatch at the tray to see 
what was beneath; but the captain’s hand feil on mine, 
heavy and hard. 

“Now, boss!” he cried, not unkindly, “is this to be 
run shipshape? or is it a Dutch grab-racket!” 

And he proceeded to untie and run over the contents 
of the papers, with a serious face and what seemed an 
ostentation of delay. Me and my impatience it would 
appear he had forgotten; for when he was quite done, 
he sat a while thinking, whistled a bar or two, refolded 
the papers, tied them up again; and then, and not 
before, deliberately raised the tray. 

I saw a cigar-box, tied with a piece of fishing-line, 
and four fat canvas-bags. Nares whipped out his 
knife, cut the line, and opened the box. It was about 
half full of sovereigns. 

“And the bags?” I whispered. 

The captain ripped them open one by one, and a 
flood of mixed silver coin burst forth and rattled in 
the rusty bottom of the box. Without word, he set to 
work to count the gold. 

“What is this?” I asked. 

“Tt’s the ship’s money,” he returned, doggedly con- 
tinuing his work. 

“The ship’s money?” I repeated. ‘““That’s the money 
Trent tramped and traded with?’ And there’s his 
cheque-book to draw upon his owners? And he has 
left it?” 


220 THE WRECKER 


“T guess he has,” said Nares, austerely, jotting down 
a note of the gold; and I was abashed into silence 
till his task should be completed. 

It came, I think, to three hundred and seventy-eight 
pounds sterling; some nineteen pounds of it in silver: 
all of which we turned again into the chest. 

“And what do you think of that?” I asked. 

“Mr. Dodd,” he replied, ““you see something of the 
rumness of this job, but not the whole. ‘The specie 
bothers you, but what gets me is the papers. Are you 
aware that the master of a ship has charge of all the 
cash in hand, pays the men advances, receives freight 
and passage money, and runs up bills in every port? 
All this he does as the owner’s confidential agent, and 
his integrity is proved by his receipted bills. I tell you, 


aol git 


the captain of a ship is more likely to forget his pants © 


than these bills which guarantee his character. I’ve 


known men drown to save them: bad men, too; but — 


this is the shipmaster’s honour. And here this Captain 
Trent—not hurried, not threatened with anything but 
a free passage in a British man-of-war—has left them 
all behind! I don’t want to express myself too strongly 
because the facts appear against me, but the thing is 
impossible.” 

Dinner came to us not long after, and we ate it on 
deck, in a grim silence, each privately racking his brain 
for some solution of the mysteries. I was indeed so 
swallowed up in these considerations, that the wreck, 
the lagoon, the islets, and the strident sea-fowl, the 
strong sun then beating on my head, and even the 
gloomy countenance of the captain at my elbow, all 
vanished from the field of consciousness. My mind 
was a blackboard, on which I scrawled and blotted out 
hypotheses; comparing each with the pictorial records 
in my memory: cyphering with pictures. In the course 
of this tense mental exercise I recalled and studied the 
faces of one memorial masterpiece, the scene of the 
saloon; and here I found myself, on a sudden, looking 
in the eyes of the Kanaka. 


he 


THE CABIN OF THE “FLYING SCUD” 221 


“There’s one thing I can put beyond doubt, at all 
events,’ I cried, relinquishing my dinner and getting 


_ briskly afoot. “There was that Kanaka I saw in the 


bar with Captain Trent, the fellow the newspapers 
and ship’s articles made out to be a Chinaman. I 
mean to rout his quarters out and settle that.” 

“All right,” said Nares. “I'll lazy off a bit longer, 
Mr. Dodd; I feel pretty rocky and mean.” 

We had thoroughly cleared out the three after- 
compartments of the ship: all the stuff from the main 
cabin and the mate’s and captain’s quarters lay piled 
about the wheel; but in the forward stateroom with 
the two bunks, where Nares had said the mate and 
cook most likely berthed, we had as yet done nothing. 
Thither I went; it was very bare; a few photographs 
were tacked on the bulkhead, one of them indecent; 
a single chest stood open, and like all we had yet 
found, it had been partly rifled. An armful of two- 
shilling novels proved to me beyond a doubt it was a 
European’s: no Chinaman would have possessed any, 
and the most literate Kanaka conceivable in a ship’s 
galley was not likely to have gone beyond one. It was 
plain, then, that the cook had not berthed aft, and I 
must look elsewhere. 

The men had stamped down the nests and driven 
the birds from the galley, so that I could now enter 
without contest. One door had been already blocked 
with rice; the place was in part darkness, full of a 
foul stale smell and a cloud of nasty flies; it had been 
left, besides, in some disorder, or else the birds, during 
their time of tenancy, had knocked the things about; 
and the floor, like the deck before we washed it, was 
spread with pasty filth. Against the wall, in the far 
corner, I found a handsome chest of camphor wood 
bound with brass, such as Chinamen and sailors love, 
and indeed all of mankind that plies in the Pacific. 
From its outside view I could thus make no deduction; 
and, strange to say, the interior was concealed. All the 
other chests, as I have said already, we had found 


2200 ae THE WRECKER 


gaping open and their contents scattered abroad; the 
same remark we found to apply afterwards in the 
quarters of the seamen; only this camphor-wood chest, 
a singular exception, was both closed and locked. 

I took an axe to it, readily forced the paltry Chinese 
fastening, and, like a custom-house officer, plunged 
my hands among the contents. For some while I 
groped among linen and cotton. Then my teeth were 
set on edge with silk, of which I drew forth several 
strips covered with mysterious characters. And these 
settled the business, for I recognised them as a kind of 
bed-hanging popular with the commoner class of the 
Chinese. Nor were further evidences wanting, such 
as night-clothes of an extraordinary design, a three- 
stringed Chinese fiddle, a silk handkerchief full of roots 
and herbs, and a neat apparatus for smoking opium 
with a liberal provision of the drug. Plainly, then, the 
cook had been a Chinaman; and if so, who was Jos. 
Amalu? Or had Jos. stolen the chest before he pro- 
ceeded to ship under a false name and domicile? It 
was possible, as anything was possible in such a welter; 
but regarded as a solution, it only led and left me 
deeper in the bog. For why should this chest have 
been deserted and neglected, when the others were 
rummaged or removed? and where had Jos. come by 
that second chest, with which (according to the clerk 
at the What Cheer) he had started for Honolulu? 

“And how have you fared?” inquired the captain, 
whom I found luxuriously reclining in our mound of 
litter. And the accent on the pronoun, the heightened 
colour of the speaker’s face, and the contained excite- 
ment in his tones, advertised me at once that I had 
not been alone to make discoveries. 

“T have found a Chinaman’s chest in the galley,” 
said I, “and John (if there was any John) was not so 
much as at pains to take his opium.” 

Nares seemed to take it mighty quietly. ‘That so?” 
said he. “Now, cast your eyes on that and own you're 
beaten!” And with a formidable clap of his open hand, 


a 


THE CABIN OF THE “FLYING SCUD” 223 


he flattened out before me, on the deck, a pair of news- 
papers. 

I gazed upon them dully, being in no mood for fresh 
discoveries. | 

“Look at them, Mr. Dodd,” cried the captain, 
sharply. “Can’t you look at them?” And he ran a 
dirty thumb along the title. “ ‘Sidney Morning Herald, 
November 26th,’ can’t you make that out?” he cried, 
with rising energy. ‘And don’t you know, sir, that 
not thirteen days after this paper appeared in New 
South Wales, this ship we’re standing in heaved her 
blessed anchors out of China? How did the Sydney 
Morning Herald get to Hong Kong in thirteen days? 
Trent made no land, he spoke no ship, till he got here. 
Then he either got it here or in Hong Kong. I give 
you your choice, my son!” he cried, and fell back 
among the clothes like a man weary of life. 

“Where did you find them?” I asked. “In that black 
bag?” 

“Guess so,” he said. “You needn’t fool with it. 
There’s nothing else but a lead-pencil and a kind of 
worked-out knife.” 

I looked in the bag, however, and was well rewarded. 

“Every man to his trade, captain,” said I. “You're 
a sailor, and you’ve given me a plenty of points; but 
I am an artist, and allow me to inform you this is quite 
as strange as all the rest. The knife is a palette knife; 
the pencil, a Winsor and Newton, and a BBB at that. 
A palette knife and a BBB on a tramp brig! It’s 
against the laws of nature.” 

“It would sicken a dog, wouldn’t it?” said Nares. 

“Yes,” I continued, ‘it’s been used by an artist, too: 
see how it’s sharpened—not for writing—no man could 
write with that. An artist, and straight from Sydney? 
How can he come in?” 

“O, that’s natural enough,” sneered Nares. “They 
cabled him to come up and illustrate this dime novel.” 

We fell a while silent. 

“Captain,” I said at last, “there is something deuced 


224 THE WRECKER | 


underhand about this brig. You tell me you’ve been 
to sea a good part of your life. You must have seen 
shady things done on ships, and heard of more. Well, 
what is this? is it insurance? is it piracy? what is it 
about? what can it be for?” 

“Mr. Dodd,” returned Nares, “you’re right about 
me having been to sea the bigger part of my life. And 
you're right again, when you think I know a good many 
ways in which a dishonest captain mayn’t be on the 
square nor do exactly the right thing by his owners, 
and altogether be just a little too smart by ninety-nine 
and three-quarters. There’s a good many ways, but 
not so many as you’d think; and not one that has 
any mortal thing to do with Trent. Trent and his 
whole racket has got to do with nothing—that’s the 
bed-rock fact; there’s no sense to it, and no use in it, 
and no story to it: it’s a beastly dream. And don’t 
you run away with that notion that landsmen take 
about ships. <A society actress don’t go around more 
publicly than what a ship does, nor is more inter- 
viewed, nor more humbugged, nor more run after by 
all sorts of little fussinesses in brass buttons. And 
more than an actress, a ship has a deal to lose; she’s 
capital, and the actress only character—if she’s that. 
The ports of the world are thick with people ready to 
kick a captain into the penitentiary, if he’s not as 
' bright as a dollar and as honest as the morning star; 
and what with Lloyd keeping watch and watch in 
every corner of the three oceans, and the insurance 
leeches, and the consuls, and the customs bugs, and 
the medicos, you can only get the idea by thinking 
of a landsman watched by a hundred and fifty de- 
tectives, or a stranger in a village Down East.” 

“Well, but at sea?” I said. | 

“You make me tired,” retorted the captain. ‘What’s 
the use—at sea? Everything’s got to come to bear- 
ings at some port, hasn’t it? You can’t stop at sea 
for ever, can you?—No; the Flying Scud is rubbish; 
if it meant anything, it would have to mean something 


sul 


THE CABIN OF THE “FLYING SCUD” 225 


so almighty intricate that James G. Blaine hasn’t got 
the brains to engineer it; and I vote for more axeing, 
pioneering, and opening up the resources of this phe- 
nomenal brig, and less general fuss,” he added, arising. 
“The dime-museum symptoms will drop in of them- 
selves, I guess, to keep us cheery.” 

But it appeared we were at the end of discoveries 
for the day; and we left the brig about sundown, with- 
out being further puzzled or further enlightened. The 
best of the cabin spoils—books, instruments, papers, 
silks, and curiosities—we carried along with us in a 
blanket, however, to divert the evening hours; and 
when supper was over, and the table cleared, and John- 
son set down to a dreary game of cribbage between 
his right hand and his left, the captain and I turned 
out our blanket on the floor, and sat side by side to 
examine and appraise the spoils. 

The books were the first to engage our notice. These 
were rather numerous (as Nares contemptuously put 
it) “for a lime-juicer.” Scorn of the British mercantile 
marine glows in the breast of every Yankee merchant 
captain; as the scorn is not reciprocated, I can only 
suppose it justified in fact; and certainly the old coun- 
try mariner appears of a less studious disposition. 
The more credit to the officers of the Flying Scud, who 
had quite a library, both literary and_ professional. 
There were Findlay’s five directories of the world—all 
broken-backed, as is usual with Findlay, and all 
marked and scribbled over with corrections and ad- 
ditions—several books of navigation, a signal code, 
and an Admiralty book of a sort of orange hue, called 
Islands of the Eastern Pacific Ocean, Vol. III., which 
appeared from its imprint to be the latest authority, 
and showed marks of frequent consultation in the 
passages about the French Frigate Shoals, the Harman, 
Cure, Pearl, and Hermes reefs, Lisiansky Island, Ocean 
Island, and the place where we then lay—Brooks or 
Midway. A volume of Macaulay’s Essays and a 
shilling Shakespeare led the van of the belles-lettres ; 


a 





226 THE WRECKER 


the rest were novels: several Miss Braddons—of 
course, Aurora Floyd, which has penetrated to every 
isle of the Pacific, a good many cheap detective books, 
Rob Roy, Auerbach’s Auf der Héhe in the German, 
and a prize temperance story, pillaged (to judge by the 
stamp) from an Anglo-Indian circulating library. 

“The admiralty man gives a fine picture of our 
island,” remarked Nares, who had turned up Midway 
Island. “He draws the dreariness rather mild, but 
you can make out he knows the place.” 

“Captain,” I cried, “you’ve struck another point 
in this mad business. See here,’ I went on eagerly, 
drawing from my pocket a crumpled fragment of the 
Daily Occidental which I had inherited from Jim: 
‘““misled by Hoyt’s Pacific Directory’? Where’s 
Hoyt?” 

“Let’s look into that,” said Nares. “I got that book 
on purpose for this cruise.” Therewith he fetched 
it from the shelf in his berth, turned to Midway Island, 
and read the account aloud. It stated with precision 
that the Pacific Mail Company were about to form 
a depot there, in preference to Honolulu, and that they 
had already a station on the island. 

“T wonder who gives these Directory men their in- 
formation,” Nares reflected. “Nobody can blame 
Trent after that. I never got in company with squarer 
lying; it reminds a man of a presidential campaign.” 

“All very well,” said I. ‘“That’s your Hoyt, and a 
fine, tall copy. But what I want to know is, where is 
Trent’s Hoyt?” 

“Took it with him,” chuckled Nares. “He had left 
everything else, bills and money and all the rest; he 
was bound to take something, or it would have aroused 
attention on the Tempest: ‘Happy thought,’ says he; 
‘let’s take Hoyt.’ ” 

“And has it not occurred to you,” I went on, “that 
all the Hoyts in creation couldn’t have misled Trent, 
since he had in his hand that red admiralty book, an 


= au es 


THE CABIN OF THE “FLYING SCUD” 227 


official publication, later in date, and particularly full 
on Midway Island?” 

“That’s a fact!” cried Nares; “and I bet the first 
Hoyt he ever saw was out of the mercantile library in 
San Francisco. Looks as if he’s brought her here on 
purpose, don’t it? But then that’s inconsistent with 
the steam-crusher of the sale. That’s the trouble with 
this brig racket; any one can make half a dozen 
theories for sixty or seventy per cent. of it; but when 
they’re made, there’s always a fathom or two of slack 
hanging out of the other end.” 

I believe our attention fell next on the papers, of 
which we had altogether a considerable bulk. I had 
hoped to find among these matter for a full-length 
character of Captain Trent, but here I was doomed, 
on the whole, to disappointment. We could make out 
he was an orderly man, for all his bills were docketed 
and preserved. That he was convivial, and inclined to 
be frugal even in conviviality several documents pro- 
claimed. Such letters as we found were, with one 
exception, arid notes from tradesmen. The exception, 
signed Hannah Trent, was a somewhat fervid appeal 
for a loan. “You know what misfortunes I have had 
to bear,” wrote Hannah, “and how much I am disap- 
pointed in George. The landlady appeared a true 
friend when I first came here, and I thought her a 
perfect lady. But she has come out since then in her 
true colors; and if you will not be softened by this 
last appeal, I can’t think what is to become of your 
affectionate ” and then the signature. This docu- 
ment was without place or date, and a voice told me 
that it had gone likewise without answer. On the 
whole, there were few letters anywhere in the ship; 
but we found one before we were finished, in a seaman’s 
chest, of which I must transcribe some sentences. It 
was dated from some place on the Clyde. “My dearist 
son,” it ran, “this is to tell you your dearist father 
passed away, Jan twelft, in the peace of the lord. He 
had your photo and dear David’s lade upon his bed, 





228 THE WRECKER ~ 


made me sit by him. Let’s be a’ thegither, he said, and 
gave you all his blessing. O my dear laddie, why were 
nae you and Davie here? He would have had a 
happier passage. He spok of both of ye all night most 
beautiful, and how ye used to stravaig on the Saturday 
afternoon, and of auld Kelvinside. Sooth the tune to 
me, he said, though it was the Sabbath, and I had to 
sooth him Kelvin Grove, and he looked at his fiddle, 
the dear man. I canna bear the sight of it, he'll 
never play it mair. O my lamb, come home to me, I’m 
all by my lane now.” The rest was in a religious vein 
and quite conventional. I have never seen any one 
more put out than Nares, when I handed him this 
letter; he had read but a few words, before he cast it 
down; it was perhaps a minute ere he picked it up 
again, and the performance was repeated the third 
time before he reached the end. 

“Tt’s touching, isn’t it?” said I. 

For all answer, Nares exploded in a brutal oath; and 
it was some half an hour later that he vouchsafed an 
explanation. “I’ll tell you what broke me up about 
that letter,” said he. “My old man played the fiddle, 
played it all out of tune: one of the things he played 
was Martyrdom, I remember—it was all martyrdom 
to me. He was a pig of a father, and I was a pig of a 
son; but it sort of came over me I would like to hear 
that fiddle squeak again. Natural,” he added; “I 
guess we’re all beasts.” 

“All sons are, I guess,” said I. “I have the same 
trouble on my conscience: we can shake hands on 
that.” Which (oddly enough, perhaps) we did. 

Amongst the papers we found a considerable sprink- 
ling of photographs; for the most part either of very 
debonair-looking young ladies or old women of the 
lodging-house persuasion. But one among them was 
the means of our crowning discovery. 

“They’re not pretty, are they, Mr. Dodd?” said 
Nares, as he passed it over. 


“Who?” I asked, mechanically taking the card (it — . 


ay 
a 
ah 


THE CABIN OF THE “FLYING SCUD” 229 


was a quarter-plate) in hand, and smothering a yawn; 
_ for the hour was late, the day had been laborious, and 


I was wearying for bed. 

“Trent and Company,’ 
picture of the gang.” 

I held it to the ight, my curiosity at a low ebb; I 
had seen Captain Trent once, and had no delight in 
viewing him again. It was a photograph of the deck 
of the brig, taken from forward: all in apple-pie order; 
the hands gathered in the waist, the officers on the 


> said he. ‘“That’s a historic 


poop. At the foot of the card was written, “Brig 


Flying Scud, Rangoon,” and a date; and above or 
below each individual figure the name had been care- 
fully noted. 

As I continued to gaze, a shock went through me; 
the dimness of sleep and fatigue lifted from my eyes, as 
fog lifts in the Channel; and I beheld with startled 
clearness the photographic presentment of a crowd of 
strangers. “J. Trent, Master” at the top of the card 
directed me to a smallish, weazened man, with busy 
eyebrows and full white beard, dressed in a frock 
eoat and white trousers; a flower stuck in his button- 
hole, his bearded chin set forward, his mouth clenched 
with habitual determination. There was not much of 
the sailor in his looks, but plenty of the martinet: a 
dry, precise man, who might pass for a preacher in 
some rigid set; and whatever he was, not the Captain 
Trent of San Francisco. The men, too, were all new 
to me: the cook, an unmistakable Chinaman, in his 
characteristic dress, standing apart on the poop steps. 
But perhaps I turned on the whole with the greatest 
curiosity to the figure labelled “E. Goddedaal, ist off.” 
He whom I had never seen, he might be the identical; 


he might be the clue and spring of all this mystery; 


and I scanned his features with the eye of a detective. 
He was of great stature, seemingly blond as a viking, 
his hair clustering round his head in frowsy curls, and 


‘two enormous whiskers, like the tusks of some strange 


—_—” 


animal, jutting from his cheeks. With these virile 


230 THE WRECKER 


Sr 


appendages and the defiant attitude in which he stood, © 


the expression of his face only imperfectly harmonised. 
It was wild, heroic, and womanish-looking; and I felt I 
was prepared to hear he was a sentimentalist, and to 
see him weep. 

For some while I digested my discovery in private, 
reflecting how best, and how with most of drama, I 
might share it with the captain. Then my sketch-book 
came in my head; and I fished it out from where it lay, 
with other miscellaneous possessions, at the foot of my 
bunk and turned to the sketch of Captain Trent and 
the survivors of the British brig Flying Scud in the 
San Francisco bar-room. 

“Nares,” said I, “I’ve told you how I first saw Cap- 
tain Trent in that saloon in ’Frisco? how he came 
with his men, one of them a Kanaka with a canary 
bird in a cage? and how I saw him afterwards at the 
auction, frightened to death, and as much surprised 
at how the figures skipped up as anybody there? 
Well,” said I, “there’s the man I saw’—and I laid the 
sketch before him—‘there’s Trent of ’Frisco and there 
are his three hands. Find one of them in the photo- 
graph, and I’ll be obliged.” 

Nares compared the two in silence. ‘Well,’ he said 
at last, “‘I call this rather a relief: seems to clear the 
horizon. We might have guessed at something of the 
kind from the double ration of chests that figured.” 

“Does it explain anything?” I asked. 

“Tt would explain everything,” Nares replied, “but 
for the steam-crusher. It’ll all tally as neat as a patent 
puzzle, if you leave out the way these people bid the 
wreck up. And there we come to a stone wall. But 
whatever it is, Mr. Dodd, it’s on the crook.” 

“And looks like piracy,” I added. 

“Looks like blind hookey!” cried the captain. ‘No, 
don’t you deceive yourself; neither your head nor mine 
is big enough to put a name on this business.” 


CHAPTER XV 
THE CARGO OF THE ‘FLYING SCUD”’ 


N my early days I was a man, the most wedded to 

his idols of the generation. I was a dweller under 
roofs; the gull of that which we call civilisation: a 
superstitious votary of the plastic arts: a cit: and a 
prop of restaurants. I had a comrade in those days, 
somewhat of an outsider, though he moved in the 
company of artists, and a man famous in our small 
world for gallantry, knee-breeches, and dry and preg- 
nant sayings. He, looking on the long meals and 
waxing bellies of the French, whom I confess I some- 
what imitated, branded me as “ a cultivator of restau- 
rant fat.” And I believe he had his finger on the 
dangerous spot; I believe, if things had gone smooth 
with me, I should now be swollen like a prize-ox in 
body, and fallen in mind to a thing perhaps as low as 
many types of bourgeois—the implicit or exclusive 
artist. That was a home word of Pinkerton’s, de- 
serving to be writ in letters of gold on the portico of 
every school of art: “What I can’t see is why you 
shouid want to do nothing else.” The dull man is 
made, not by the nature, but by the degree of his im- 
mersion in a single business. And all the more if that 
be sedentary, uneventful, and ingloriously safe. More 
than one-half of him will then remain unexercised 
and undeveloped; the rest will be distended and de- 
formed by over-nutrition, over-cerebration, and the 
heat of rooms. And I have often marvelled at the 
impudence of gentlemen, who describe and pass judg- 
ments on the life of man, in almost perfect ignorance 
of. all its necessary elements and natural careers. 
' 231 


232 THE WRECKER 


Those who dwell in clubs and studios may paint excel- 
lent pictures or write enchanting novels. There is one 
thing that they should not do: they should pass no 
judgment on man’s destiny, for it is a thing with which 
they are unacquainted. Their own life is an excres- 
cence of the moment, doomed in the vicissitude of 
history, to pass and disappear: the eternal life of man, 
spent under sun and rain and in rude physical effort, 
lies upon one side, scarcely changed since the begin- 
ning. 

I would I could have carried along with me to 
Midway Island all the writers and the prating artists 
of my time. Day after day of hope deferred, of heat, 
of unremitting toil; night after night of aching limbs, 
bruised hands, and a mind obscured with the grateful 
vacancy of physical fatigue: the scene, the nature 
of my employment; the rugged speech and faces of 
my fellow-toilers, the glare of the day on deck, the 
stinking twilight in the bilge, the shrill myriads of the 
ocean-fowl: above all, the sense of our immitigable 
isolation from the world and from the current epoch;— 
keeping another time, some eras old; the new day 
heralded by no daily paper, only by the rising sun; 
and the State, the churches, the peopled empires, war, 
and the rumors of war, and the voices of the arts, 
all gone silent as in the days ere they were yet in- 
vented. Such were the conditions of my new experience 
in life, of which (if I had been able) I would have had 
all my confréres and contemporaries to partake: for- 
getting, for that while, the orthodoxies of the moment, 
and devoted to a single and material purpose under the 
eye of heaven. 

Of the nature of our task, I must continue to give 
some summary idea. The forecastle was lumbered 
with ship’s chandlery, the hold nigh full of rice, the 
lazarette crowded with the teas and silks. These must 
all be dug out; and that made but a fraction of our 
task. The hold was ceiled throughout; a part, where 
perhaps some delicate cargo was once stored, had been 


CARGO OF THE “FLYING SCUD” 233 


lined, in addition, with inch boards; and between every 
beam there was a movable panel into the bilge. Any 
of these, the bulkheads of the cabins, the very timbers 
of the hull itself, might be the place of hiding. It was 
therefore necessary to demolish, as we proceeded, a 
great part of the ship’s inner skin and fittings, and to 
auscultate what remained, like a doctor sounding for 
a lung disease. Upon the return from any beam or 
bulkhead, of a flat or doubtful sound, we must up axe 
and hew into the timber: a violent and—from the 
amount of dry rot in the wreck—a mortifying exercise. 
Every night saw a deeper inroad into the bones of 
the Flying Scud—more beams tapped and hewn in 
splinters, more planking peeled away and tossed aside 
—and every night saw us as far as ever from the end 
and object of our arduous devastation. In this per- 
petual disappointment, my courage did not fail me, 
but my spirits dwindled; and Nares himself grew silent 
and morose. At night, when supper was done, we 
passed on hour in the cabin, mostly without speech: 
I, sometimes dozing over a book; Nares, sullenly but 
busily drilling sea-shells with the instrument called a 
Yankee Fiddle. A stranger might have supposed we 
were estranged; as a matter of fact, in this silent 
comradeship of labour, our intimacy grew. 

I had been struck, at the first beginning of our enter- 
prise upon the wreck, to find the men so ready at the 
eaptain’s lightest word. I dare not say they hked, 
but I can never deny that they admired him 
thoroughly. A mild word from his mouth was more 
valued than flattery and half a dollar from myself; 
if he relaxed at all from his habitual attitude of 
censure, smiling alacrity surrounded him; and I was 
led to think his theory of captainship, even if pushed 
to excess, reposed upon some ground of reason. But 
even terror and admiration of the captain failed us 
before the end. The men wearied of the hopeless, un- 
remunerative quest and the long strain of labour. 
They began to shirk and grumble. Retribution fell on 


234 THE WRECKER 


them at once, and retribution multiplied the grumb- 
lings. With every day it took harder driving to keep 
them to the daily drudge; and we, in our narrow 
boundaries, were kept conscious every moment of the 
ill-will of our assistants. 

In spite of the best care, the object of our search 
was perfectly well known to all on board; and there 
had leaked out besides some knowledge of those in- 
consistencies that had so greatly amazed the captain 
and myself. JI could overhear the men debate the 
character of Captain Trent, and set forth competing 
theories of where the opium was stowed; and as they 
seemed to have been eavesdropping on ourselves, I 
thought little shame to prick up my ears when I had 
the return chance of spying upon them, in this way. 
I could diagnose their temper and judge how far they 
were informed upon the mystery of the Flying Scud. 
It was after having thus overheard some almost muti- 
nous speeches, that a fortunate idea crossed my mind. 
At night, I matured it in my bed, and the first thing 
next morning broached it to the captain. 

“Suppose I spirit up the hands a bit,” I asked, “by 
the offer of a reward?” 

“Tf you think you’re getting your month’s wages out 
of them the way it is, I don’t,’ was his reply. “How- 
ever, they are all the men you’ve got, and you’re the 
supercargo.” 

This, from a person of the captain’s character, might 
be regarded as complete adhesion; and the crew were 
accordingly called aft. Never had the captain worn a 
front more menacing. Jt was supposed by all that 
some misdeed had been discovered, and some surpris- 
ing punishment was to be announced. 

“See here, you!” he threw at them over his shoulder 
as he walked the deck, “Mr. Dodd, here, is going to 
offer a reward to the first man who strikes the opium 
in that wreck. There’s two ways of making a donkey 
go; both good, I guess: the one’s kicks and the other’s 
carrots. Mr. Dodd’s going to try the carrots. Well, 


CARGO OF THE “FLYING SCUD” 235 


my sons,’—and here he faced the men for the first 
time with his hands behind him—‘“if that opium’s 
not found in five days, you can come to me for the 
kicks.” 

He nodded to the present narrator, who took up 
the tale. “Here is what I propose, men,” said I: “I 
put up one hundred and fifty dollars. If any man 
can lay hands on the stuff right away, and off his own 
club, he shall have the hundred and fifty down. If 
any one can put us on the scent of where to look, he 
shall have a hundred and twenty-five, and the balance 
shall be for the lucky one who actually picks it up. 
We'll call it the Pinkerton Stakes, captain,” I added, 
with a smile. 

“Call it the Grand Combination Sweep, te cries 
he. “lor I go you better. Look here, men, I make up 
this jack-pot to two hundred and fifty dollars, Amer- 
ican gold coin.” 

“Thank you, Captain Nares,” said I; “that was 
handsomely done.” 

“It was kindly meant,” he returned. 

The offer was not made in vain; the hands had searce 
yet realised the magnitude of the reward, they had 
searce begun to buzz aloud in the extremity of hope 
and wonder, ere the Chinese cook stepped forward 
with gracious gestures and explanatory smiles. 

“Captain,” he began, “I serv-um two year Melican 
navy; serv-um six year mail-boat steward. Savvy 
plenty.” 

“Oho!” cried Nares, “you savvy plenty, do you? 
(Beggar’s seen this trick in the mail-boats, I guess.) 
Well, why you no savvy a little sooner, sonny?” 

“T think bimeby make-um reward,” replied the cook, 
with smiling dignity. 

“Well, you can’t say fairer than that,” the captain 
admitted, ‘“‘and now the reward’s offered, you'll talk? 
Speak up, then. Suppose you speak true, you get 

reward. See?” 
 “T think long time,” replied the Chinaman. “She 


y] 


236 THE WRECKER 


plenty litty mat lice; too much plenty litty mat lice; 
sixty ton litty mat lice. I think all-e-time: perhaps 
plenty opium plenty litty mat lice?” 

“Well, Mr. Dodd, how does that strike you?” asked 
the captain. “He may be right, he may be wrong. 
He’s likely to be right; for if he isn’t, where can the 
stuff be? On the other hand, if he’s wrong, we destroy 
a hundred and fifty tons of good rice for nothing. It’s 
a point to be considered.” 

“TI don’t hesitate,” said I. “Let’s get to the bottom 
of the thing. The rice is nothing; the rice will neither 
make nor break us.” 

“That’s how I expected you to see it,” returned 
Nares.° 

And we called the boat away and set forth on our 
new quest. 

The hold was now almost entirely emptied; the mats 
(of which there went forty to the short ton) had been 
stacked on deck, and now crowded the ship’s waist 
and forecastle. It was our task to disembowel and 
explore six thousand individual mats, and incidentally 
to destroy a hundred and fifty tons of valuable food. 
Nor were the circumstances of the day’s business less 
strange than its essential nature. Each man of us, 
armed with a great knife, attacked the pile from his 
own quarter, slashed into the nearest mat, burrowed 
in with his hands, and shed forth the rice upon the 
deck, where it heaped up, overflowed, and was trodden 
down, poured at last into the scuppers, and occasionally 
spouted from the vents. About the wreck, thus trans- 
formed into an overflowing granary, the sea-fowl 
swarmed in myriads and with surprising insolence. 
The sight of so much food confounded them; they 
deafened us with their shrill tongues, swooped in our 
midst, dashed in our faces, and snatched the grain 
from between our fingers. The men—their hands 
bleeding from these assaults—turned savagely on the 
offensive, drove their knives into the birds, drew them 
out crimsoned, and turned again to dig among the 


CARGO OF THE “FLYING SCUD” 237 


rice, unmindful of the gawking creatures that struggled 
and died among their feet. We made a singular 
picture: the hovering and diving birds; the bodies of 
the dead discolouring the rice with blood; the scup- 
_ pers vomiting breadstuff; the men, frenzied by the gold 
hunt, toiling, slaying, and shouting aloud: over all, 
the lofty intricacy of rigging and the radiant heaven 
of the Pacific. Every man there toiled in the im- 
mediate hope of fifty dollars; and I, of fifty thousand. 
Small wonder if we waded callously in blood and food. 

It was perhaps about ten in the forenoon when the 
scene was interrupted. Nares, who had just ripped 
open a fresh mat, drew forth, and slung at his feet, 
among the rice, a papered tin box. 

‘“How’s that?” he shouted. 

A cry broke from all hands: the next moment, for- 
getting their own disappointment, in that contagious 
sentiment of success, they gave three cheers that scared 
the sea-birds; and the next, they had crowded round 
the captain, and were jostling together and groping 
with emulous hands in the new-opened mat. Box 
after box rewarded them, six in all; wrapped, as I 
have said, in a paper envelope, and the paper printed 
on, in Chinese characters. 

Nares turned to me and shook my hand. “I began 
to think we should never see this day,” said he. “I 
congratulate you, Mr. Dodd, on having pulled it 
through.” 

The captain’s tones affected me profoundly; and 
when Johnson and the men pressed round in turn 
with congratulations, the tears came in my eyes. 

“These are five-tael boxes, more than two pounds,” 
_ said Nares, weighing one in his hand. ‘Say two hun- 
dred and fifty dollars to the mat. Lay into it, boys! 
we'll make Mr. Dodd a millionaire before dark.” 

It was strange to see with what a fury we fell to. 
The men had now nothing to expect; the mere idea of 
great sums inspired them with disinterested ardour. 
Mats were slashed and disemboweled, the rice flowed 


238 THE WRECKER 


to our knees in the ship’s waist, the sweat ran in our 
eyes and blinded us, our arms ached to agony; and yet 
our fire abated not. Dinner came; we were too weary 
to eat, too hoarse for conversation; and yet dinner 
was scarce done, before we were afoot again and 
delving in the rice. Before nightfall not a mat was 
unexplored, and we were face to face with the as- 
tonishing result. 

For of all the inexplicable things in the story of the 
Flying Scud, here was the most inexplicable. Out of 
the six thousand mats, only twenty were found to have 
been sugared; in each we found the same amount, 
about twelve pounds of drug! making a grand total 
of two hundred and forty pounds. By the last San 
Francisco quotation, opium was selling for a fraction 
over twenty dollars a pound; but it had been known 
not long before to bring as much as forty in Honolulu, 
where it was contraband. 

Taking, then, this high Honolulu figure, the value 
of the opium on board the Flying Scud fell consider- 
ably short of ten thousand dollars, while at the San 
Francisco rate, it lacked a trifle of five thousand. And 
fifty thousand was the price that Jim and I had paid 
for it. And Bellairs had been eager to go higher! 
There is no language to express the stupor with which 
I contemplated this result. 

It may be argued we were not yet sure; there might 
be yet another cache; and you may be certain in that 
hour of my distress the argument was not forgotten. 
There was never a ship more ardently perquested; no 
stone was leit unturned, and no expedient untried; day 
after day of growing despair, we punched and dug in 
the brig’s vitals, exciting the men with promises and 
presents; evening after evening Nares and I sat face 
to face in the narrow cabin, racking our minds for 
some neglected possibility of search. I could stake 
my salvation on the certainty of the result: in all that 
ship there was nothing left of value but the timber 
and the copper nails. So that our case was lamentably 


CARGO OF THE “FLYING SCUD” 239 


plain; we had paid fifty thousand dollars, borne the 
charges of the schooner, and paid fancy interest on 
money; and if things went well with us, we might 
realise fifteen per cent. of the first outlay. We were 
not merely bankrupts, we were comic bankrupts: a fair 
butt for jeering in the streets. I hope I bore the blow 
with a good countenance; indeed, my mind had long 
been quite made up, and since the day we found the 
opium I had known the result. But the thought of 
Jim and Mamie ached in me like a physical pain, and 

I shrank from speech and companionship. 

I was in this frame of mind when the captain pro- 
posed that we should land upon the island. I saw 
he had something to say, and only feared it might be 
consolation; for I could just bear my grief, not 
bungling sympathy; and yet I had no choice but to 
accede to his proposal. 

We walked a while along the beach in silence. The 
sun overhead reverberated rays of heat; the staring 
sand, the glaring lagoon, tortured our eyes; and the 
birds and the boom of the far-away breakers made a 
savage symphony. 

“IT don’t quite require to tell you the game’s up?” | 
Nares asked. 

NO, said «1, 

“T was thinking of getting to sea to-morrow,” he 
pursued. 

“The best thing you can do,” said I. 

“Shall we say Honolulu?” he inquired. 

“Q yes; let’s stick to the programme,” I cried. 
“Honolulu be it!” 

There was another silence, and then Nares cleared 
his throat. 

“We've been pretty good friends, you and me, Mr. 
Dodd,” he resumed. “We've been going through the 
kind of thing that tries a man. We’ve had the hardest 
kind of work, we’ve been badly backed, and now we’re 
badly beaten.. And we’ve fetched through without a 

word of disagreement. I don’t say this to praise 


240 THE WRECKER 


myself: it’s my trade; it’s what I’m paid for, and 
trained for, and brought up to. But it was another 
thing for you} it was all new to you; and it did me good 
to see you stand right up to it and swing right into it, 
day in, day out. And then see how you’ve taken this 
disappointment, when everybody knows you must have 
been tautened up to shying-point! I wish you’d let 
me tell you, Mr. Dodd, that you’ve stood out mighty 
manly and handsomely in all this business, and made 
every one like you and admire you. And I wish you’d 
let me tell you, besides, that I’ve taken this wreck 
business as much to heart as you have; something kind 
of rises in my throat when I think we’re beaten; and if 
I thought waiting would do it, I would stick on this 
reef until we starved.” 

I tried in vain to thank him for these generous 
words, but he was beforehand with me in a moment. 

“T didn’t bring you ashore to sound my praises,” he 
interrupted. “We understand one another now, that’s 
all; and I guess you can trust me. What I wished to 
speak about is more important, and it’s got to be faced. 
What are we to do about the Flying Scud and the 
dime novel?” 

“T really have thought nothing about that,” I re- 
plied. “But I expect I mean to get at the bottom of it; 
and if the bogus Captain Trent is to be found on the 
earth’s surface, I guess I mean to find him.” 

“All you’ve got to do is talk,” said Nares; “you 
can make the biggest kind of boom; it isn’t often the 
reporters have a chance at such a yarn as this; and 
I can tell you how it will go. It will go by telegraph, 
Mr. Dodd; it’ll be telegraphed by the column, and 
headlined, and frothed up, and denied by authority; 
and it'll hit bogus Captain Trent in a Mexican bar- 
room, and knock over bogus Goddedaal in a slum 
somewhere up the Baltic, and bowl down Hardy and 
Brown in sailors’ music-halls round Greenock. O, 
there’s no doubt you can have a regular domestic 


eae 


CARGO OF THE “FLYING SCUD” 241 


Judgment Day. The only point is whether you de- 
hberately want to.” 

“Well,” said I, “I deliberately don’t want one thing: 
I deliberately don’t want to make a public exhibition 
of myself and Pinkerton: so moral—smuggling opium; 
such damned fools—paying fifty thousand for a ‘dead 
horse’ !” 

“No doubt it might damage you in a business sense,” 
the captain agreed. “And I’m pleased you take that 
view; for I’ve turned kind of soft upon the job. 
There’s been some crookedness about, no doubt of it; 
but, Law bless you! if we dropped upon the troupe, 
all the premier artists would slip right out with the 
boodle in their grip-sacks, and you’d only collar a lot 
of old mutton-headed shell-backs that didn’t know the 
back of the business from the front. I don’t take much 
stock in Mercantile Jack, you know that; but, poor 
devil, he’s got to go where he’s told; and if you make 
trouble, ten to one it’ll make you sick to see the in- 
nocents who have to stand the racket. It would be 
different if we understood the operation; but we don’t, 
you see: there’s a lot of queer corners in life; and my 
vote is to let the blame’ thing lie.” 

“You speak as if we had that in our power,” I 
objected. 

“And so we have,” said he. 

“What about the men?” I asked. “They know too 
much by half; and you can’t keep them from talking.” 

“Can't 1?” returned Nares. “I bet a_ boarding- 
master can! They can be all half-seas over, when they 
get ashore, blind drunk by dark, and cruising out of 
the Golden Gate in different deep-sea ships by the 
next morning. Can’t keep them from talking, can’t 
I? Well, I can make them talk separate, leastways. 
If a whole crew came talking, parties would listen; 
but if it’s only one lone old shell-back, it’s the usual 
yarn. And at least they needn’t talk before six 
months, or—if we have luck, and there’s a whaler 


242 THE WRECKER 


handy— three years. And by that time, Mr. Dodd, it’s 
ancient history.” 

“That’s what they call shanghaiing, isn’t it?” I 
asked. “I thought it belonged to the dime novel.” 

“QO, dime novels are right enough,’ returned the 
captain. “Nothing wrong with the dime novel, only 
that things happen thicker than they do in life, and the 
practical seamanship is off-colour.” 

“So we can keep the business to ourselves,” I mused. 

“There’s one other person that might blab,” said the 
captain. ‘Though I don’t believe she has anything left 
to tell.” 

“And who is she?” I asked. 

“The old girl there,’ he answered, pointing to the 
wreck. “I know there’s nothing in her; but somehow 
I’m afraid of some one else—it’s the last thing you’d 
expect, so it’s just the first that’ll happen—some one 
dropping into this God-forgotten island where nobody 
drops in, waltzing into that wreck that we’ve grown old 
with searching, stooping straight down, and picking 
right up the very thing that tells the story. What’s 
that to me? you may ask, and why am I gone Soft 
Tommy on this Museum of Crooks? They’ve smashed 
up you and Mr. Pinkerton; they’ve turned my hair 
grey with conundrums; they’ve been up to larks, no 
doubt; and that’s all I know of them—you say. Well, 
and that’s just where it is. I don’t know enough; I 
don’t know what’s uppermost; it’s just such a lot of 
miscellaneous eventualities as I don’t care to go stir- 
_ ring up; and I ask you to let me deal with the old girl 
after a patent of my own.” 

“Certainly—what you please,’ said I, scarce with 
attention, for a new thought now occupied my brain. 
“Captain,” I broke out, “you are wrong; we cannot 
hush this up. There is one thing you have forgotten.” 

“What is that?” he asked. 

“A bogus Captain Trent, a bogus Goddedaal, a whole 
bogus crew, have all started home,” said I. “If we 
are right, not one of them will reach his journey’s end. 


CARGO OF THE “FLYING SCUD” 243 


And do you mean to say that such a circumstance as 
that can pass without remark?” 

“Sailors,” said the captain, “only sailors! If they 
were all bound for one place, in a body, I don’t say so; 
but they’re all going separate—to Hull, to Sweden, to 
the Clyde, to the Thames. Well, at each place, what is 
it? Nothing new. Only one sailor man missing: got 
drunk, or got drowned, or got left; the proper sailor’s 
end.” 

Something bitter in the thought and in the speaker’s 
tone struck me hard. “Here is one that has got left!” 
I cried, getting sharply to my feet; for we had been 
some time seated. “I wish it were the other. I don’t 
—don’t relish going home to Jim with this!” 

“See here,” said Nares, with ready tact, “I must be 
getting aboard. Johnson’s in the brig annexing chand- 
lery and canvas, and there’s some things in the Norah 
that want fixing against we go to sea. Would you like 
to be left here in the chicken-ranch? I'll send for you 
to supper.” 

I embraced the proposal with delight. Solitude, in 
my frame of mind, was not too dearly purchased at 
the risk of sunstroke or sand-blindness; and soon I 
was alone on the ill-omened islet. JI should find it 
hard to tell of what I thought—of Jim, of Mamie, of 
our lost fortune, of my lost hopes, of the doom before 
me: to turn to at some mechanical occupation in some 
subaltern rank, and to toil there, unremarked and un- 
amused, until the hour of the last deliverance. I 
was, at least, so sunk in sadness, that I scarce re- 
marked where I was going; and chance (or some finer 
sense that lives in us, and only guides us when the 
mind is-in abeyance) conducted my steps into a quarter 
of the island where the birds were few. By some 
devious route, which I was unable to retrace for my 
return, I was thus able to mount, without interruption, 
to the highest point of land. And here I was recalled 
to consciousness by a last discovery. 

The spot on which I stood was level, and commanded 


244 THE WRECKER 


a wide view of the lagoon, the bounding reef, the round 
horizon. Nearer hand I saw the sister islet, the wreck, 
the Norah Creina, and the Norah’s boat already mov- 
ing shoreward. For the sun was now low, flaming on 
the sea’s verge; and the galley chimney smoked on 
board the schooner. 

It thus befell that though my discovery was both 
affecting and suggestive, I had no leisure to examine 
further. What I saw was the blackened embers of fire 
of wreck. By all the signs, it must have blazed to a 
good height and burned for days; from the scantling 
spar that lay upon the margin only half consumed, it 
must have been the work of more than one; and I 
received at once the image of a forlorn troop of cast- 
aways, houseless in that lost corner of the earth, and 
feeding there their fire of signal. The next moment 
a hail reached me from the boat; and, bursting through 
the bushes and the rising sea-fowl, I said farewell (I 
trust for ever) to that desert isle. 


CHAPTER XVI 
IN WHICH I TURN SMUGGLER, AND THE CAPTAIN CASUIST 


ol Bee last night at Midway, I had little sleep; the 
next morning, after the sun was risen, and the 
clatter of departure had begun to reign on deck, I lay 
a long while dozing; and when at last I stepped from 
the companion, the schooner was already leaping 
through the pass into the open sea. Close on her 
board, the huge scroll of a breaker unfurled itself 
along the reef with a prodigious clamour; and behind 
I saw the wreck vomiting into the morning air a coil 
of smoke. The wreaths already blew out far to lee- 
ward; flames already glittered in the cabin skylight; 
and the sea-fowl were scattered in surprise as wide as 
the lagoon. As we drew further off, the conflagration 
of the Flying Scud flamed higher; and long after we 
had dropped all signs of Midway Island, the smoke 
still hung in the horizon like that of a distant steamer. 
With the fading out of that last vestige, the Norah 
Creina passed again into the empty world of cloud and 
water by which she had approached; and the next 
features that appeared, eleven days later, to break the 
line of sky, were the arid mountains of Oahu. 

It has often since been a comfortable thought to me 
that we had thus destroyed the tell-tale remnants of 
the Flying Scud; and often a strange one that my last 
sight and reminiscence of that fatal ship should be a 
pillar of smoke on the horizon. To so many others 
besides myself the same appearance had played a part 
in the various stages of that business: luring some to 
what they little imagined, filling some with unimag- 
inable terrors. But ours was the last smoke raised in 

245 


246 THE WRECKER 


the story; and with its dying away the secret of the 
Flying Scud became a private property. 

It was by the first light of dawn that we saw, close 
on board, the metropolitan island of Hawaii. We held 
along the coast, as near as we could venture, with a 
fresh breeze and under an unclouded heaven; behold- 
ing, as we went, the arid mountain sides and scrubby 
cocoa-palms of that somewhat melancholy archipelago. 
About four of the afternoon we turned Waimanolo 
Point, the westerly headland of the great bight of 
Honolulu; showed ourselves for twenty minutes in full 
view; and then fell again to leeward, and put in the 
rest of daylight, plying under shortened sail under the 
lee of Waimanolo. 

A little after dark we beat once more about the 
point, and crept cautiously towards the mouth of the 
Pearl Lochs, where Jim and I had arranged I was to 
meet the smugglers. The night was happily obscure, 
the water smooth. We showed, according to instruc- 
tions, no light on deck: only a red lantern dropped 
from either cathead to within a couple of feet of the 
water. A lookout was stationed on the bowsprit end, 
another in the cross-trees; and the whole ship’s com- 
pany crowded forward, scouting for enemies or friends. 
It was now the crucial moment of our enterprise; we 
were now risking liberty and credit; and that for a 
sum so small to a man in my bankrupt station, that I 
could have laughed aloud in bitterness. But the piece 
had been arranged, and we must play it to the finish. 

For some while, we saw nothing but the dark moun- 
tain outline of the island, the torches of native fisher- 
men glittering here and there along the foreshore, and 
right in the midst, that cluster of brave lights with 
which the town of Honolulu advertises itself to ahe 
seaward. Presently a ruddy star appeared inshore of 
us, and seemed to draw near unsteadily. This was 
the anticipated signal; and we made haste to show the 
counter-sign, lowering a white light from the quarter, 
extinguishing the two others, and laying the schooner 


I TURN SMUGGLER 247 


incontinently to. The star approached slowly; the 
sounds of oars and of men’s speech came to us across 
the water; and then a voice hailed us. 

“Ts that Mr. Dodd?” 

“Yes,” I returned. “Is Jim Pinkerton there?’ 

“No, sir,” replied the voice. “But there’s one of his 
crowd here; name of Speedy.” 

“Tm here, Mr. Dodd,’ added Speedy himself. “I 
have letters for you.” 

“All right,” I replied. “Come aboard, Bonuemces 
and let me see my mail.” 

A whaleboat accordingly ranged alongside, and thies 
men boarded us: my old San Francisco friend, the 
stock-gambler Speedy, a little wizened person of the 
name of Sharpe, and a big, flourishing, dissipated- 
looking man: called Fowler. The two last (I learned 
afterward) were frequent partners; Sharpe supplied the 
capital, and Fowler, who was quite a character in the 
islands and occupied a considerable station, brought 
activity, daring, and a private influence, highly neces- 
sary in the case. Both seemed to approach the business 
with a keen sense of romance; and I believe this was 
the chief attraction, at least with Fowler—for whom 
I early conceived a sentiment of liking. But in that 
firs; moment I had something else to think of than 
to judge my new acquaintances; and before Speedy had 
fished out the letters, the full extent of our misfortune 
was revealed. 

“We've rather bad news for you, Mr. Dodd,” said 
Fowler. “You're firm’s gone up.” 

“Already!” I exclaimed. 

“Well, it was thought rather a wonder Pinkerton 
held on as long as he did,” was the reply. ‘The wreck 
deal was too big for your credit; you were doing a big 
business, no doubt, but you were doing it on precious 
little capital; and when the strain came, you were 
bound to go. Pinkerton’s through all right: seven 
cents dividend; some remarks made, but nothing to 
hurt: the press let you down easy—I guess Jim had 


248 THE WRECKER 


relations there. The only trouble is, that all this 
Flying Scud affair got in the papers with the rest; 
everybody’s wide awake in Honolulu; and the sooner 
we get the stuff in and the dollars out, the better for all 
concerned.” 

“Gentlemen,” said I, “you must excuse me. My 
friend, the captain here, will drink a glass of cham- 
pagne with you to give you patience; but as for my- 
self, I am unfit even for ordinary conversation till I 
have read these letters.” 

They demurred a little: and indeed the danger of 
delay seemed obvious; but the sight of my distress, 
which I was unable entirely to control, appealed 
strongly to their good-nature; and I was suffered at 
last to get by myself on deck, where, by the light of 
a lantern smuggled under shelter of the low rail, I 
read the following wretched correspondence: 


“My dear Loudon,’ ran the first, “this will be 
handed you by your friend Speedy of the Catamouwnt. 
His sterling character and loyal devotion to yourself 
pointed him out as the best man for our purposes in 
Honolulu—the parties on the spot being difficult to 
manipulate. A man called Billy Fowler (you must have 
heard of Billy) is the boss; he is in politics some, and 
squares the officers. I have hard times before me in 
the city, but I feel as bright as a dollar and as strong 
as John L. Sullivan. What with Mamie here, and my 
partner speeding over the seas, and the bonanza in the 
wreck, I feel like I could juggle with the Pyramids of 
Egypt, same as conjurers do with aluminium balls. My 
earnest prayers follow you, Loudon, that you may feel 
the way I do—just inspired! My feet don’t touch the 
ground; I kind of swim. Mamie is like Moses and 
Aaron that held up the other individual’s arms. She 
carries me along like a horse and buggy. I am beating 
the record. 

“Your true partner, 


“J. PINKERTON.” 


oa 


I TURN SMUGGLER 249 


Number two was in a different style:— 


“My dearest Loudon,—How am I to prepare you for 
this dire intelligence? O dear me, it will strike you to 
the earth. The Fiat has gone forth; our firm went 
bust at a quarter before twelve. It was a bill of 
Bradley’s for $200 that brought these vast operations 
to a close, and evolved liabilities of upwards of two 
hundred and fifty thousand. O, the shame and pity 
of it! and you but three weeks gone! Loudon, don’t 
blame your partner: if human hands and brains could 
have sufficed, I would have held the thing together. 
But it just slowly crumbled; Bradley was the last kick, 
but the blamed business just melted. I give the 
habilities; it’s supposed they’re all in; for the cowards 
were waiting, and the claims were filed like taking 
tickets to hear Patti. I don’t quite have the hang of 
the assets yet, our interests were so extended; but I am 
at it day and night, and I guess will make a creditable 
dividend. If the wreck pans out only half the way it 
ought, we’ll turn the laugh still. I am as full of grit 
and work as ever, and just tower above our troubles. 
Mamie is a host in herself. Somehow I feel it was only 
me that had gone bust, and you and she soared clear 
of it. Hurry up. That’s all you have to do. 

“Yours ever, 
“J. PINKERTON.” 


The third was yet more altered:— 


“My poor Loudon,” it began, “I laboured far into 
the night getting our affairs in order; you could not 
believe their vastness and complexity. Douglas B. 
Longhurst said humourously that the receiver’s work 
would be cut out for him. I cannot deny that some of 
them have a speculative look. God forbid a sensitive, 
refined spirit like yours should ever come face to face 
with a Commissioner in Bankruptcy; these men get all 


_ the sweetness knocked right out of them. But I could 


ee a 


250 THE WRECKER 


bear up better if it weren’t for press comments. Often 
and often, Loudon, I recall to mind your most legiti- 
mate critiques of the press system. They published an 
interview with me, not the least like what I said, and 
with jeering comments; it would make your blood boil, 
it was literally inhumane. I wouldn’t have written it 
about a yellow dog that was in trouble like what I 
am. Mamie just winced, the first time she has turned 
a hair right through the whole catastrophe. How won- 
derfully true was what you said long ago in Paris, 
about touching on people’s personal appearance! The 
fellow said % 





And then these words had been scored through and 
my distressed friend turned to another subject: 


“T cannot bear to dwell upon our assets. They 
simply don’t show up. Even Thirteen Star, as sound a 
line as can be produced upon this coast, goes begging. 
The wreck has thrown a blight on all we ever touched. 
And where’s the use? God never made a wreck big 
enough to fill our deficit. I am haunted by the thought 
that you may blame me; I know how I despised your 
“remonstrances. O, Loudon, don’t be hard on your 
miserable partner. The funny-dog business is what 
kills. J fear your stern rectitude of mind like the eye 
of God. I cannot think but what some of my books 
seem mixed up; otherwise, I don’t seem to see my way 
as plain as I could wish to. Or else my brain is gone 
soft. Loudon, if there should be any unpleasantness, 
you can trust me to do the right thing and keep you 
clear. I’ve been telling them already how you had no 
business grip and never saw the books. O, I trust I 
have done right in this! I knew it was a liberty; I 
know you may justly complain; but it was some things 
that were said. And mind you, all legitimate business! 
Not even your shrinking sensitiveness could find fault 
with the first look of one of them, if they had panned 
out right. And you know, the Flying Scud was the 


I TURN SMUGGLER 251 


biggest gamble of the crowd, and that was your own 
idea. Mamie says she never could bear to look you 
in the face, if that idea had been mine; she is so con- 
scientious! 
“Your broken-hearted 
“Jim.” 


The last began without formality :— 


“This is the end of me commercially. I give up; my 
nerve is gone. I suppose I ought to be glad: for we're 
through the court. I don’t know as ever I knew how, 
and I’m sure I don’t remember. If it pans out—the 
wreck, I mean—we’ll go to Europe and live on the 
interest of our money. No more work for me. I shake 
when people speak to me. I have gone on, hoping and 
hoping, and working and working, and the lead has 
pinched right out. I want to lie on my back in a 
garden, and read Shakespeare and E. P. Roe. Don’t 
suppose it’s cowardice, Loudon. I’ma sick man. Rest 
is what I must have. I’ve worked hard all my life; 
I never spared myself; every dollar I ever made, [ve 
coined my brains for it. Ive never-done a mean 
thing; I’ve lived respectable, and given to the poor. 
Who has a better right to a holiday than I have? And 
I mean to have a year of it straight out; and if I 
don’t, I shall lie right down here in my tracks, and die 
of worry and brain trouble. Don’t mistake. ‘That’s 
so. If there are any pickings at all, trust Speedy; 
don’t let the creditors get wind of what there is. ] 
helped you when you were down; help me now. Don’t 
deceive yourself; you’ve got to help me right now, or 
never. I am clerking, and not fit to cypher. Mamie’s 
typewriting at the Phoenix Guano Exchange, down 
town. The light is right out of my life. I know you'll 
not like to do what I propose. Think only of this; that 
it’s life or death for 
. “Jim PINKERTON. 


252 THE WRECKER 


“PS. Our figure was seven per cent. O, what a 
fall was there! Well, well, it’s past mending; I don't 
want to whine. But, Loudon, I do want to live. No 
more ambition; all I ask is life. I have so much to 
make it sweet to me! I am clerking, and useless at 
that. I know I should have fired such a clerk inside 
of forty minutes, in my time. But my time’s over. I 
can only cling on to you. Don’t fail 

“Jim PINKERTON.” 


There was yet one more postscript, yet one more 
outburst of self-pity and pathetic adjuration; and a 
doctor’s opinion, unpromising enough, was besides en- 
closed. I pass them both in silence. I think shame 
to have shown, at so great length, the half-baked 
virtues of my friend dissolving in the crucible of sick- 
ness and distress; and the effect upon my spirits can 
be judged already. I got to my feet, when I had done, 
drew a deep breath, and stared hard at Honolulu. One 
moment the world seemed at an end; the next, I was 
conscious of a rush of independent energy. On Jim I 
could rely no longer; I must now take hold myself. I 
must decide and act on my own better thoughts. 

The word was easy to say; the thing, at the first 
blush, was undiscoverable. I was overwhelmed with 
miserable, womanish pity for my broken friend; his 
outcries grieved my spirit; I saw him then and now— 
then, so invincible; now, brought so low—and knew 
neither how to refuse, nor how to consent to his pro- 
posal. "The remembrance of my father, who had fallen 
in the same field unstained, the image of his monument 
incongruously rising, a fear of the law, a chill air that 
seemed to blow upon my fancy from the doors of 
prisons, and the imaginary clank of fetters, recalled me 
to a different resolve. And then again, the wails of my 
sick partner intervened. So I stood hesitating, and yet 
with a strong sense of capacity behind: sure, if I 
could but choose my path, that I should walk in it with 
resolution. 


RD 


I TURN SMUGGLER 253 


Then I remembered that I had a friend on board, 
and stepped to the companion. 

“Gentlemen,” said I, “only a few moments more: 
but these, I regret to say, I must make more tedious 
still by removing your companion. It is indispensable 
that I should have a word or two with Captain Nares.” 

Both the smugglers were afoot at once, protesting. 
The business, they declared must be despatched at 
once; they had run risk enough, with a conscience; and 
they must either finish now, or go. 

“The choice is yours, gentlemen,” said I, “and, I 
believe, the eagerness. I am not sure that I have 
anything in your way; even if I have, there are a 
hundred things to be considered; and I assure you it 
is not at all my habit to do business with a pistol to 
my head.” 

“That is all very proper, Mr. Dodd; there is no wish 
to coerce you, believe me,” said Fowler; “only, please 
consider our position. It is really dangerous; we were 
not the only people to see your schooner off Wai- 
manolo.” 

“Mr. Fowler,” I replied, “I was not born yesterday. 
Will you allow me to express an opinion, in which I 
may be quite wrong, but to which I am entirely 
wedded? If the Custom-House officers had been com- 
ing, they would have been here now. In other words, 
somebody is working the oracle, (and for a good guess) 
his name is Fowler.” 

Both men laughed loud and long; and being supplied 
with another bottle of Longhurst’s champagne, suf- 
fered the captain and myself to leave them without 
further word. 

I gave Nares the correspondence, and he skimmed it 
through. 

“Now, captain,” said I, “I want a fresh mind on 


this. What does it mean?” 


“It’s large enough text,” replied the captain. “It 
means you're to stake your pile on Speedy, hand him 
over all you can, and hold your tongue. I almost wish 


254 THE WRECKER 


you hadn’t shown it to me,” he added, wearily. ‘What 
with the specie from the wreck and the opium money, 
it comes to a biggish deal.” 

“That’s supposing that I do it?” said I. 

“Exactly,” said he, ‘supposing you do it.” 

“And there are pros and cons to that,” I observed. 

“There’s San Quentin, to start with,” said the cap- 
tain; “and suppose you clear the penitentiary, there’s 
the nasty taste in the mouth. The figure’s big enough 
to make bad trouble, but it’s not big enough to be 
picturesque; and I should guess a man always feels 
kind of small who has sold himself under six cyphers. 
That would be my way, at least; there’s an excitement 
about a million that might carry me on; but the other 
way, I should feel kind of lonely when I woke in bed. 
Then there’s Speedy. Do you know him well?” ° 

“No, I do not,” said I. 

“Well, of course he can vamoose with the entire 
speculation, if he chooses,” pursued the captain, “and 
if he don’t I can’t see but what you’ve got to support 
and bed and board with him to the end of time. I 
guess it would weary me. ‘Then there’s Mr. Pinkerton, 
of course. He’s been a good friend to you, hasn’t he? 
Stood by you, and all that? and pulled you through 
for all he was worth?” 

“That he has,” I cried; “I could never begin telling 
you my debt to him!” 

“Well, and that’s a consideration,” said the captain. 
“As a matter of principle, I wouldn’t look at this busi- 
ness at the money. ‘Not good enough,’ would be my 
word. But even principle goes under when it comes to 
friends—the right sort, I mean. This Pinkerton is 
frightened, and he seems sick; the medico don’t seem 
to care a cent about his state of health; and you’ve 
got to figure how you would like it, if he came to die. 
Remember, the risk of this swindle is all yours; Jt’s 
no sort of risk to Mr. Pinkerton. Well, you’ve got to 
put it that way plainly, and see how you like the sound 
of it: my friend Pinkerton is in danger of the New 


I TURN SMUGGLER 255 


Jerusalem, I am in danger of San Quentin; which risk 
do I propose to run?” 

“That’s an ugly way to put it,” I objected, “and 
perhaps hardly fair. There’s right and wrong to be 


~ considered.” 


“Don’t know the parties,” replied Nares; ‘and I’m 
coming to them, anyway. For it strikes me, when it 
came to smuggling opium, you walked right up?” 

“So I did,” I said; “sick I am to have to say it!” 

“All the same,” continued Nares, “you went into the 
opium-smuggling with your head down; and a good 
deal of fussing I’ve listened to, that you hadn’t more of 
it to smuggle. Now, maybe your partner’s not quite 
the same as you are; maybe he sees precious little dif- 
ference between the one thing and the other.” 

“You could not say truer: he sees none, I do believe,” 
cried I; “and though I see one, I could never tell you 
how.” 

“We never can,” said the oracular Nares; “taste is 
all a matter of opinion. But the point is, how will your 
friend take it? You refuse a favour, and you take the 
high horse at the same time; you disappoint him, and 
you rap him over the knuckles. It won’t do, Mr. 
Dodd; no friendship can stand that. You must be as 
good as your friend, or as bad as your friend, or 
start on a fresh deal without him.” 

“T don’t see it!” said I. “You don’t know Jim!” 

“Well, you will see,” said Nares. “And now, here’s 
another point. This bit of money looks mighty big to 
Mr. Pinkerton; it may spell life or health to him; but 
among all your creditors, I don’t see that it amounts 
to a hill of beans—I don’t believe it’ll pay their car- 
fares all round. And don’t you think you'll ever get 
thanked. You were known to pay a long price for the 
chance of rummaging that wreck; you do the rum- 
maging, you come home, and you hand over ten thou- 
sand—or twenty, if you like—a part of which you'll 
have to own up you made by smuggling; and, mind! 
you'll never get Billy Fowler to stick his name to a 


256 THE WRECKER 


receipt. Now, just glance at the transaction from the 
outside, and see what a clear case it makes. Your ten 
thousand is a sop; and people will only wonder you 
were so damned impudent as to offer such a small one! 
Whichever way you take it, Mr. Dodd, the bottom’s 
out of your character; so there’s one thing less to be 
considered.” 

“I daresay you’ll scarce believe me,” said I, “but I 
feel that a positive relief.” 

“You must be made some way different from me, 
then,” returned Nares. “And, talking about me, I 
might just mention how I stand. You’ll have no 
trouble from me—you’ve trouble enough of your own; 
and I’m friend enough, when a friend’s in need, to shut 
my eyes and go right where he tells me. All the same, 
I’m rather queerly fixed. My owners’ll have to rank 
with the rest on their charter-party. Here am I, their 
representative! and I have to look over the ship’s side 
while the bankrupt walks his assets ashore in Mr. 
Speedy’s hat-box. It’s a thing I wouldn’t do for James 
G. Blaine; but I’ll do it for you, Mr. Dodd, and only 
sorry I can’t do more.” 

“Thank you, captain; my mind is made up,” said I. 
“Tl go straight, rvat celum! I never understood that 
old tag before to-night.” 

“T hope it isn’t my business that decides you?” asked 
the captain. 

“T’ll never deny it was an element,” said I. “TI hope, 
I hope, I’m not cowardly; I hope I could steal for Jim 
myself; but when it comes to dragging in you and 
Speedy, and this one and the other, why, Jim has got 
to die, and there’s an end. I'll try to work for him 
when I get to Frisco, I suppose; and I suppose I'll 
fail, and look on at his death, and kick myself: it can’t 
be helped—I’ ll fight it on this line. gi § 

“T don’t say as you’re wrong,” replied Nares, “and 
T’ll be hanged if I know if you're right. It suits me 
anyway. And look here—hadn’t you “better just show 
our friends over the side?” he added; “no good of 





I TURN SMUGGLER 257 


being at the risk of worry and smuggling for the bene- 
fit of creditors.” 

“T don’t think of the creditors,” said I. “But I’ve 
kept this pair so long, I haven’t ‘got the brass to fire 
them now.’ 

Indeed, I believe that was my only reason for extent 
ing upon a transaction which was now outside my 
interest, but which (as it chanced) repaid me fifty-fold 
in entertainment. Fowler and Sharpe were both pre- 
ternaturally sharp; they did me the honour in the be- 
ginning to attribute to myself their proper vices; and 
before we were done had grown to regard me with an 
esteem akin to worship. This proud position I attained 
by no more recondite arts than telling the mere truth 
and unaffectedly displaying my indifference to the 
result. JI have doubtless stated the essentials of all 
good diplomacy, which may be rather regarded, there- 
fore, as a grace of state, than the effect of management. 
For to tell the truth is not in itself diplomatic, and 
to have no care for the result a thing involuntary. 
When I mentioned, for instance, that I had but two 
hundred and forty pound of drug, my smugglers ex- 
changed meaning glances, as who should say, “Here is 
a foeman worthy of our steel!” But when I care- 
lessly proposed thirty-five dollars a pound, as an 
amendment to their offered twenty, and wound up with 
the remark: “The whole thing is a matter of moon- 
shine to me, gentlemen. Take it or want it, and fill 
your glasses” —I had the indescribable gratification to 
see Sharpe nudge Fowler warningly, and Fowler choke 
down the jovial acceptance that stood ready on his 
lips, and lamely substitute a ‘‘No—no more wine, 
please, Mr. Dodd!” Nor was this all: for when the af- 
fair was settled at fifty dollars a pound—a shrewd 
stroke of business for my creditors—and our friends 
had got on board their whaleboat and shoved off, it 
appeared they were imperfectly acquainted with the 
conveyance to sound upon still water, and I had the 
joy to overhear the following testimonial: 


258 THE WRECKER 


“Deep man, that Dodd,” said Sharpe. 

And the bass-toned Fowler echoed, “Damned if I 
understand his game.” 

Thus we were left once more alone upon the Norah 
Creina; and the news of the night, and the lamenta- 
tions of Pinkerton, and the thought of my own harsh 
decision, returned and besieged me in the dark. Ac- 
cording to all the rubbish I had read, I should have 
been sustained by the warm consciousness of virtue. 
Alas, I had but the one feeling: that I had sacrificed 
my sick friend to the fear of prison-cells and stupid 
starers. And no moralist has yet advanced so far as 
to number cowardice amongst the things that are their 
own reward. 


Seb 


CHAPTER XVII 
LIGHT FROM THE MAN OF WAR 


N the early sunlight of the next day we tossed close 
off the buoy and saw the city sparkle in its groves 


about the foot of the Punch Bowl, and the masts 


clustering thick in the small harbour. <A good breeze, 
which had risen with the sea, carried us triumphantly 
through the intricacies of the passage; and we had 
soon brought up not far from the landing-stairs. I 
remember to have remarked an ugly horned reptile of 
a modern war-ship in the usual moorings across the 
port, but my mind was so profoundly plunged in mel- 
ancholy that I paid no heed. 

Indeed, I had little time at my disposal. Messieurs 
Sharpe and Fowler had left the night before in the 
persuasion that I was a lar of the first magnitude; the 
genial belief brought them aboard again with the 
earliest opportunity, proffering help to one who had 
proved how little he required it, and hospitality to so 
respectable a character. I had business to mind, I had 
some need both of assistance and diversion; I liked 
Fowler—I don’t know why; and, in short, I let them 
do with me as they desired. No creditor intervening, 
I spent the first half of the day inquiring into the 
conditions of the tea and silk market under the aus- 
pices of Sharpe; lunched with him in a private apart- 
ment of the Hawaiian Hotel—for Sharpe was a tee- 
totaller in public; and about four in the afternoon was 
delivered into the hands of Fowler. This gentleman 
owned a bungalow on the Waikiki beach; and there 
in company with certain young bloods of Honolulu, If 
was entertained to a sea-bathe, indiscriminate cocktails, 

259 


260 THE WRECKER 


a dinner, a hula-hula, and (to round off the night), 
poker and assorted liquors. To lose money in the 
small hours to pale, intoxicated youth, has always 
appeared to me a pleasure overrated. In my then 
frame of mind, I confess I found it even delightful; 
put up my money (or rather my creditor’s), and put 
down Fowler’s champagne with equal avidity and suc- 
cess; and awoke the next morning to a mild headache 
and the rather agreeable lees of the last night’s excite- 
ment. The young bloods, many of whom were still far 
from sober, had taken the kitchen into their own hands, 
vice the Chinaman deposed; and since each was en- 
gaged upon a dish of his own, and none had the least 
scruple in demolishing his neighbour’s handiwork, I 
became early convinced that many eggs would be 
broken and few omelets made. The discovery of a jug 
of milk and a crust of bread enabled me to stay my 
appetite; and since it was Sunday, when no business 
could be done, and the festivities were to be renewed 
that night in the abode of Fowler, it occurred to me to 
slip silently away and enjoy some air and solitude. 

I turned seaward under the dead crater known as 
Diamond Head. My way was for some time under the 
shade of certain thickets of green, thorny trees, dotted 
with houses. Here I enjoyed some pictures of the 
native life: wide-eyed, naked children, mingled with 
pigs; a youth asleep under a tree; an old gentleman 
spelling through glasses his Hawaiian Bible; the some- 
what embarrassing spectacle of a lady at her bath in 
a spring; and the glimpse of gaudy-coloured gowns in 
the deep shade of the houses. Thence I found a road 
along the beach itself, wading in sand, opposed and 
buffeted by: the whole weight of the Trade: on one 
hand, the glittering and sounding surf, and the bay 
lively with many sails; on the other, precipitous, arid 
gullies and sheer cliffs, mounting towards the crater 
and the blue sky. For all the companionship of skim- 
ming vessels, the place struck me with a sense of 
solitude. There came in my head what I had been 


LIGHT FROM THE MAN OF WAR _ 261 


told the day before at dinner, of a cavern above in 
the bowels of the volcano, a place only to be visited 
with the light of torches, a treasure-house of the bones 
of priests and warriors, and clamorous with the voice 
of an unseen river pouring seaward through the 
crannies of the mountain. At the thought, it was re- 
vealed to me suddenly, how the bungalows, and the 
Fowlers, and the bright, busy town and crowding ships, 
were all children of yesterday; and for centuries be- 
fore, the obscure life of the natives, with its glories and 
ambitions, its joys and crimes and agonies, had rolled 
unseen, like the mountain river, in that sea-girt place. 
Not Chaldea appeared more ancient, nor the Pyramids 
of Egypt more abstruse; and I heard time measured 
by the “drums and tramplings” of immemorial con- 
quests, and saw myself the creature of an hour. Over 
the bankruptcy of Pinkerton and Dodd of Montana, 
Block, 8. F., and the conscientious troubles of the 
junior partner, the spirit of eternity was seen to smile. 

To this mood of philosophic sadness, my excesses of 
the night before no doubt contributed; for more things 
than virtue are at times their own reward: but I was 
greatly healed at least of my distresses. And while I 
was yet enjoying my abstracted humour, a turn of the 
beach brought me in view of the signal station, with 
its watch-house and flag-staff, perched on the im- 
mediate margin of a cliff. The house was new and 
clean and bald, and stood naked to the Trades. The 


wind beat about it in loud squalls; the seaward win- 


dows rattled without mercy; the breach of the surf 
below contributed its increment of noise; and the fall 
of my foot in the narrow verandah passed unheard by 
those within. 

They were two on whom I thus entered unexpec- 
tedly: the look-out man, with grizzled beard, keen sea- 
man’s eyes, and that brand on his countenance that 
comes of solitary living; and a visitor, an oldish orator- 
ical fellow, in the small tropical array of the British 
man-o-war’s man, perched on a table, and smoking a 


262 THE WRECKER 


cigar. I was made pleasantly welcome, and was soon 
listening with amusement to the sea-lawyer. 

‘No, if I hadn’t have been born an Englishman,” 
was one of his sentiments, “‘damn me! Id rather ’a’ 
been born a Frenchy! I’d lke to see another nation 
fit to black their boots.” Presently after, he developed 
his views on home politics with similar trenchancy. 
“Vd rather be a brute beast than what I’d be a liberal,” 
he said. ‘Carrying banners and that! a pig’s got more 
sense. Why, look at our chief engineer—they do say 
he carried a banner with his own ’ands: ‘Hooroar for 
Gladstone!’ I suppose, or ‘Down with the Aristoc- 
racy!’ What ’arm does the aristocracy do? Show me 
a country any good without one! Not the States; why, 
it’s the ’ome of corruption! I knew a man—he was a 
good man, ‘ome born—who was signal quartermaster 
in the Wyandotte. He told me he could never have got 
there, if he hadn’t have ‘run with the boys’—told it 
me as I’m telling you. Now we’re all British subjects 
here ” he was going on. 

“T am afraid I am an American,’ I said apologet- 
ically. 

He seemed the least bit taken aback, but recovered 
himself; and with the ready tact of his betters, paid 
me the usual British compliment on the riposte. “You 
don’t say so!” he exclaimed. “Well, I give you my 
word of honour, I’d never have guessed it. Nobody 
could tell it on you,” said he, as though it were some 
form of liquor. 

I thanked him, as I always do, at this particular 
stage, with his compatriots: not so much perhaps for 
the compliment to myself and my poor country, as 
for the revelation (which is ever fresh to me) of Brit- 
tannic self-sufficiency and taste. And he was so far 
softened by my gratitude, as to add a word of praise 
on the American method of lacing sails. “You’re ahead 
of us in lacing sails,” he said. “You can say that 
with a clear conscience.” 

“Thank you,” I replied. “I shall certainly do so.” 





tooweiie 


LIGHT FROM THE MAN OF WAR ~ 2638 


At this rate, we got along swimmingly; and when I 
rose to retrace my steps to the Fowlery, he at once 
started to his feet and offered me the welcome solace 
of his company for the return. I believe I discovered 
much alacrity at the idea; for the creature (who seemed 
to be unique, or to represent a type like that of the 
dodo) entertained me hugely. But when he had pro- 
duced his hat, I found I was in the way of more than 
entertainment; for on the ribbon I could read the 
legend: ‘““H.M.S. Tempest.” 

“T say,” I began, when our adieus were paid, and 
we were scrambling down the path from the look-out, 
“it was your ship that picked up the men on board the 
Flying Scud, wasn’t it?” 

“You may say so,” said he. “And a blessed good 
job for the Flying-Scuds. It’s a God-forsaken spot, 
that Midway Island.” 

“T’ve just come from there,” said J. “It was I who 
bought the wreck.” 3 

“Beg your pardon, sir,” cried the sailor: “gen’lem’n 
in the white schooner?” 

“The same,” said I. 

My friend saluted, as though he were now, for the 
- first time, formally introduced. 

“Of course,” I continued, “I am rather taken up 
with the whole story; and I wish you would tell me 
what you can of how the men were saved.” 

“Tt was like this,” said he. ‘We had orders to call 
at Midway after castaways, and had our distance 
pretty nigh run down the day before. We steamed 
half-speed all night, looking to make it about noon; 
for old Tootles—beg your pardon, sir—the captain— 
was precious scared of the place at night. Well, there’s 
nasty, filthy currents round that Midway; you know, 
as has been there; and one on ’em must have set us 
down. Leastways, about six bells, when we had ought 
to been miles away, some one sees a sail, and lo and 
be’old, there was the spars of a full-rigged brig! We 
raised her pretty fast, and the island after her; and 


q 


& 
made out she was hard aground, canted on her bilge, 
and had her ens’n flying, union down. It was breaking 
‘igh on the reef, and we laid well out, and sent a 
couple of boats. I didn’t go in neither; only stood and 
looked on; but it seems they was all scared and mud- 
dled, and didn’t know which end was uppermost. One 
on ’em kep’ snivelling and wringing of his ’ands; he 
come on board all of a sop like a monthly nurse. That 
Trent, he come first, with his ’and in a bloody rag. I 
was near ’em as I am to you; and I could make out he 
was all to bits—’eard his breath rattle in his blooming 
lungs as he come down the ladder. Yes, they was a 
scared lot, small blame to ’em, J say! ‘The next after 
Trent, come him as was mate.” 

“Goddedaal!” I exclaimed. 

“And a good name for him, too,” chuckled the man- 
o’-war’s man, who probably confounded the word with — 
a familiar oath. “A good name, too; only it weren't 
his. He was a gen’lem’n born, sir, as had gone maske- 
werading. One of our officers knowed him at ’ome, 
reckonises him, steps up, ’olds out his ’and right off, 
and says he: ‘’Ullo, Norrie, old chappie!’ he says. 
The other was coming up, as bold as look at it; didn’t 
seem put out—that’s where blood tells, sir! Well, 
no sooner does he ’ear his born name given him, than 
he turns as white as the Day of Judgment, stared at 
Mr. Sebright like he was looking at a ghost, and then 
(I give you my word of honour) turned to, and doubled 
up in a dead faint. ‘Take him down to my berth,’ 
says Mr. Sebright. ‘’Tis poor old Norrie Carthew,’ 
he says.” 

“And what—what sort of a gentleman was this Mr. 
Carthew?” I gasped. 

“The ward-room steward told me he was come of 
the best blood in England,” was my friend’s reply: 
“Eton and ’Arrow bred;—and might have been a har’- 
net!” 

“No, but to look at?” I corrected him. 

“The same as you or me,” was the uncompromising 


| 
a 
j 
‘ 


264 THE WRECKER 





LIGHT FROM THE MAN OF WAR — 265 


answer: “not much to look at. J didn’t know he was 
a gen’lem’n; but then, I never see him cleaned up.” 

“How was that?” I cried. “O, yes, I remember: 
he was sick all the way to ’Frisco, was he not?” 

“Sick, or sorry, or something,” returned my inform- 
ant. “My belief, he didn’t hanker after showing up. 
He kep’ close; the ward-room steward, what took his 
meals in, told me he ate nex’ to nothing: and he was 
fetched ashore at ’Frisco on the quiet. Here was how 
it was. It seems his brother had took and died, him 
as had the estate. This one had gone in for his beer, 
by what I could make out; the old folks at ’ome had 
turned rusty; no one knew where he had gone to. Here 
he was, slaving in a merchant brig, shipwrecked on 
Midway, and packing up his duds for a long voyage 
in a open boat. He comes on board our ship, and by 
God, here he is a landed proprietor, and. may be in 
Parliament to-morrow! It’s no less than natural he 
oar keep dark: so would you and me, in the same 

ox.” 

“I daresay,” said I. “But you saw more of the 
others?” 

“To be sure,” says he: “no ’arm in them from what 
I see. There was one ’Ardy.there: colonial born he 
was, and had been through a power of money. ‘There 
was no nonsense about ’Ardy; he had been up, and 
he had come down, and took it so. His ’eart was in 
the right place; and he was well informed, and knew 
French; and Latin, I believe, like a native! I liked 
that ’Ardy; he was a good-looking boy, too.” 

“Did they say much about the wreck?” I asked. 

“There wasn’t much to say, I reckon,” replied the 
man-o’-war’s man. “It was all in the papers. ’Ardy 
used to yarn most about the coins he had gone through; 
he had lived with book-makers, and jockeys, and pugs, 
and actors, and all that: a precious low lot!” added 
this judicious person. “But it’s about here my ’orse is 
moored, and by your leave I’ll be getting ahead.” 

“One moment,” said I. “Is Mr. Sebright on board?” 


266 THE WRECKER 


“No, sir, he’s ashore to-day,” said the sailor. “I 
took up a bag for him to the ’otel.” 

With that we parted. Presently after my friend 
overtook and passed me on a hired steed which seemed 
to scorn its cavalier; and I was left in the dust of his 
passage, a prey to whirling thoughts. For I now stood, 
or seemed to stand, on the immediate threshold of 
these mysteries. J knew the name of the man Dick- 
son—his name was Carthew; I knew where the money 
came from that opposed us at the sale—it was part of 
Carthew’s inheritance; and in my gallery of illustra- 
tions to the history of the wreck, one more picture 
hung; perhaps the most dramatic of the series. It 
showed me the deck of a war-ship in that distant part 
of the great ocean, and officers and seamen looking 
curiously on; and a man of birth and education, who 
had been sailing under an alias on a trading brig, and 
was now rescued from desperate peril, felled lke an 
ox by the bare sound of his own name. I could not 
fail to be reminded of my own experience at the Oc- 
cidental telephone. The hero of three styles, Dickson, 
Goddedaal, or Carthew, must be the owner of a lively 
—or a loaded—conscience, and the reflection recalled 
to me the photograph found on board the Flying Scud; 
just such a man, I reasoned, would be capable of just 
such starts and crises; and I inclined to think that 
Goddedaal (or Carthew) was the mainspring of the 
mystery. 

One thing was plain: as long as the Tempest was in 
reach, I must make the acquaintance of both Sebright 
and the doctor. To this end, I excused myself with 
Mr. Fowler, returned to Honolulu, and passed the re- 
mainder of the day hanging vainly round the cool 
verandahs of the hotel. It was near nine o’clock at 
night before I was rewarded. 

“That is the gentleman you were asking for,” said 
the clerk. 

I beheld a man in tweeds, of an incomparable 
languor of demeanour, and carrying a cane with genteel 


LIGHT FROM THE MAN OF WAR — 267 


effort. From the name, I had looked to find a sort of 
viking and young ruler of the battle and the tempest; 
and I was the more disappointed, and not a little 
alarmed, to come face to face with this impracticable 
type. 
“IT believe I have the pleasure of addressing Lieu- 
tenant Sebright,” said I, stepping forward. 

“Aw, yes,” replied the hero; “but, aw! I dawn’t 
knaw you, do I?” (He spoke for all the world like 
Lord Foppington in the old play—a proof of the peren- 
nial nature of man’s affectations. But his limping 
dialect, I scorn to continue to reproduce.) 

“It was with the intention of making myself known, 
that I have taken this step,” said I, entirely unabashed 
(for impudence begets in me its like—perhaps my only 
martial attribute). ‘“‘We have a common subject of 
interest, to me very lively; and I believe I may be in 
a position to be of some service to a friend of yours 
—to give him, at least, some very welcome informa- 
tion.” 

The last clause was a sop to my conscience: I could 
not pretend, even to myself, either the power or the 
will to serve Mr. Carthew; but I felt sure he would 
hke to hear the Flying Scud was burned. 

“T don’t know—I—I don’t understand you,” stam- 
mered my victim. ‘I don’t have any friends in Hono- 
lulu, don’t you know?” 

“The friend to whom I refer is English,” I replied. 
“It is Mr. Carthew, whom you picked up at Midway. 
My firm has bought the wreck; I am just returned from 
breaking her up; and to make my business quite clear 
to you—I have a communication it is necessary I 
should make; and have to trouble you for Mr. Car- 
thew’s address.” 

It will be seen how rapidly I had dropped all hope 
of interesting the frigid British bear. He, on his side, 
was plainly on thorns at my insistence; I judged he 
was suffering torments of alarm lest I should prove 
an undesirable acquaintance; diagnosed him for a shy, 


) 


268 THE WRECKER 


dull, vain, unamiable animal, without adequate defence 
—a sort of dishoused snail; and concluded, rightly 
enough, that he would consent to anything to bring our 
interview to a conclusion. A moment later, he had 
fled, leaving with me a sheet of paper, thus inscribed:— 


Norris Carthew 
Stallbridge-le-Carthew, 
Dorset. 


I might have cried victory, the field of battle and 
some of the enemy’s baggage remaining in my oc- 
cupation. As a matter of fact, my moral sufferings 
during the engagement had rivalled those of Mr. Se- 
bright; I was left incapable of fresh hostilities; I owned 
that the navy of old England was (for me) invincible 
as of yore; and giving up all thought of the doctor, 
inclined to salute her veteran flag, in the future, from 
a prudent distance. Such was my inclination, when I 
retired to rest; and my first experience the next morn- 
ing strengthened it to certainty. For I had the pleas- 
ure of encountering my fair antagonist on his way on 
board; and he honoured me with a recognition so dis- 
gustingly dry, that my impatience overflowed, and 
(recalling the tactics of Nelson) I neglected to perceive 
or to return it. 

Judge of my astonishment, some half-hour later, to 
receive a note of invitation from the Tempest. 

“Dear Sir,” it began, “we are all naturally very 
much interested in the wreck of the Flying Scud, and 
as soon as I mentioned that I had the pleasure of 
making your acquaintance, a very general wish was 
expressed that you would come and dine on board. It 
will give us all the greatest pleasure to see you to- 
night, or in case you should be otherwise engaged, to 
luncheon either to-morrow or to-day.” <A note of the 
hours followed, and the document wound up with the 
name of “J. Lascelles Sebright,” under an undeniable 
statement that he was sincerely mine. 

“No, Mr. Lascelles Sebright,” I reflected, “you are 


~ in 


LIGHT FROM THE MAN OF WAR — 269 


not, but I begin to suspect that (like the lady in the 
song) you are another’s. You have mentioned your 
adventure, my friend; you have been blown up; you 
have got your orders; this note had been dictated; and 
I am asked on board (in spite of your melancholy 
protests) not to meet the men, and not to talk about 
the Flying Scud, but to undergo the scrutiny of some 
one interested in Carthew: the doctor, for a wager. 
And for a second wager, all this springs from your 
facility in giving the address.” I lost no time in an- 
swering the billet, electing for the earliest occasion; 
and at the appointed hour, a somewhat blackguard- 
looking boat’s crew from the Norah Creina conveyed 
me under the guns of the Tempest. 

The ward-room appeared pleased to see me; Se- 
bright’s brother officers, in contrast to himself, took a 
boyish interest in my cruise; and much was talked of 
the Flying Scud; of how she had been lost, of how I 
had found her, and of the weather, the anchorage, and 
the currents about Midway Island. Carthew was re- 
ferred to more than once without embarrassment; the 
parallel case of a late Earl of Aberdeen, who died mate 
on board a Yankee schooner, was adduced. If they 
told me little of the man, it was because they had not 
much to tell, and only felt an interest in his recogni- 
tion and pity for his prolonged ill-health. I could 
never think the subject was avoided; and it was clear 
that the officers, far from practising concealment, had 
nothing to conceal. 

So far, then, all seemed natural, and yet the doctor 
troubled me. This was a tall, rugged, plain man, on 
the wrong side of fifty, already grey, and with a rest- 
less mouth and bushy eyebrows: he spoke seldom, but 
then with gaiety; and his great, quaking, silent 
laughter was infectious. I could make out that he was 
at once the quiz of the ward-room and perfectly re- 
spected; and I made sure that he observed me covertly. 
It is certain I returned the compliment. If Carthew 
had feigned sickness—and all seemed to point in that 


270 ‘THE WRECKER 


direction—here was the man who knew all—or cer- 
tainly knew much. His strong, sterling face progres- 
sively and silently persuaded of his full knowledge. 
That was not the mouth, these were not the eyes of 
one who would act in ignorance, or could be led at 
random. Nor again was it the face of a man squeamish 
in the case of malefactors; there was even a touch 
of Brutus there, and something of the hanging judge. 
In short, he seemed the last character for the part as- 
signed him in my theories; and wonder and curiosity 
contended in my mind. 

Luncheon was over, and an adjournment to the 
smoking-room proposed, when (upon a sudden im- 
pulse) I burned my ships, and pleading indisposition, 
requested to consult the doctor. 

“There is nothing the matter with my body, Dr. 
Urquart,”’ said I, as soon as we were alone. 

He hummed, his mouth worked, he regarded me 
steadily with his grey eyes, but resolutely held his | 
peace. 

“T want to talk to you about the Flying Scud and 
Mr. Carthew,” I resumed. “Come: you must have 
expected this. I am sure you know all; you are shrewd, 
and must have a guess that I know much. How are 
we to stand to one another? and how am I to stand 
to Mr. Carthew?” 

“T do not fully understand you,” he replied, after a 
pause; and then, after another: “It is the spirit I refer 
to, Mr. Dodd.” 

“The spirit of my inquiries?” I asked. 

He nodded. 

“T think we are at cross-purposes,” said I. “The 
spirit is precisely what I came in quest of. I bought 
the Flying Scud at a ruinous figure, run up by Mr. 
Carthew through an agent; and I am, in consequence, 
a bankrupt. But if I have found no fortune in the 
wreck, I have found unmistakable evidences of foul 
play. Conceive my position: I am ruined through this 
man, whom I never saw; I might very well desire 


a: 


LIGHT FROM THE MAN OF WAR 271 


revenge or compensation; and I think you will admit I 
have the means to extort either.” 

He made no sign in answer to this challenge. 

“Can you not understand, then,” I resumed, “the 
spirit in which I come to one who is surely in the 
secret, and ask him honestly and plainly: How do 
I stand to Mr. Carthew?” 

“T must ask you to be more explicit,” said he. 

“You do not help me much,” I retorted. “But see 
if you can understand: my conscience is not very 
fine-spun; still, 1 have one. Now, there are degrees 
of foul play, to some of which I have no particular 
objection. I am sure with Mr. Carthew, I am not at 
all the person to forego an advantage; and I have 
much curiosity. But, on the other hand, I have no 
taste for persecution; and I ask you to believe that 
I am not the man to make bad worse, or heap trouble 
on the unfortunate.” 

“Yes; I think I understand,” said he. “Suppose I 
pass you my word that, whatever may have occurred, 
there were excuses—great excuses—I may say, very 
great?” 

“Tt would have weight with me, doctor,” I replied. 

“T may go further,’ he pursued. “Suppose I had 
been there or you had been there: after a certain event 
had taken place, it’s a grave question what we might 
have done—it’s even a question what we could have 
done—ourselves. Or take me. I will be plain with 
you, and own that I am in possession of the facts. 
You have a shrewd guess how I have acted in that 
knowledge. May I ask you to judge from the char- 
acter of my action, something of the nature of that 
knowledge, which I have no call, nor yet no title, to 
share with you?” 

I cannot convey a sense of the rugged conviction and 
judicial emphasis of Dr. Urquart’s speech: to those 
who did not hear him, it may appear as if he fed me 
on enigmas; to myself who heard, I seemed to have 
received a lesson and a compliment. 


272 THE WRECKER 


“T thank you,’ I said. “I feel you have said as 
much as possible, and more than I had any right to 
ask, I take that as a mark of confidence which I 
will try to deserve. I hope, sir, you will let me regard 
you as a friend.” 

He evaded my proffered friendship with a blunt pro- 
posal to rejoin the mess; and yet a moment later, con- 
trived to alleviate the snub. For, as we entered the 
smoking-room, he laid his hand on my shoulder with a 
kind familiarity. 

“T have just prescribed for Mr. Dodd,” says he, “a 
glass of our Madeira.” 

I have never again met Dr. Urquart: but he wrote 
himself so clearly upon my memory that I think I see 
him still. And indeed I had cause to remember the 
man for the sake of his communication. It was hard 
enough to make a theory fit the circumstances of the 
Flying Scud; but one in which the chief actor should 
stand the least excused, and might retain the esteem or’ 
at least the pity of a man like Dr. Urquart, failed me 
utterly. Here at least was the end of my discoveries; 
I learned no more, till I learned all; and my reader 
has the evidence complete. Is he more astute than 
I was? or, like me, does he give it up? 


Po 
t 


CHAPTER XVIII 
CROSS-QUESTIONS AND CROOKED ANSWERS 


HAVE said hard words of San Francisco; they 
must scarce be literally understood (one cannot 
suppose the Israelites did justice to the land of 
Pharaoh); and the city took a fine revenge on me on 
my return. She had never worn a more becoming 
guise; the sun shone, the air was lively, the people had 
flowers in their button-holes and smiles upon their 
faces; and as I made my way towards Jim’s place of 
employment, with some very black anxieties at heart, 
I seemed to myself a blot on the surrounding gaiety. 
My destination was in a by-street, in a mean, 
rickety building; “The Franklin H. Dodge Steam 
Printing Company” appeared upon its front, and in 
characters of greater freshness, so as to suggest recent 
conversion, the watch-cry, ‘““White Labour Only.” In 
the office, in a dusty pen, Jim sat alone before a table. 
A wretched chance had overtaken him in clothes, body, 
and bearing; he looked sick and shabby; he who had 
once rejoiced in his day’s employment, like a horse 
among pastures, now sat staring on a column of ac- 
counts, idly chewing a pen, at times heavily sighing, 
the picture of inefficiency and inattention. He was 
sunk deep in a painful reverie; he neither saw nor 
heard me; and I stood and watched him unobserved. 
I had a sudden vain relenting. Repentance bludgeoned 
me. As I had predicted to Nares, I stood and kicked 
myself. Here was I come home again, my honour 
saved; there was my friend in want of rest, nursing, 
and a generous diet; and I asked myself with Falstaff, 
“What is in that word honour? what is that honour?” 
273 


274 THE WRECKER 


and, like Falstaff, I told myself that it was air. 

“Jim!” said I. 

“Loudon!” he gasped, and jumped from his chair 
and stood shaking. 

The next moment I was over the barrier, and we 
were hand in hand. 

‘My poor old man!” I cried. 

“Thank God you're home at last!’ he gulped, and 
kept patting my shoulder with his hand. 

“T’ve no good news for you, Jim!” said I. 

“You’ve come—that’s the good news that I want,” 
he replied. ‘“O, how I’ve longed for you, Loudon!” 

“T couldn’t do what you wrote me,” I said, lowering 
my voice. “The creditors have it all. I couldn’t do 
rea 

“Ssh!” returned Jim. “I was crazy when I wrote. 
I could never have looked Mamie in the face if we’d 
have done it. O, Loudon, what a gift that woman is! 
You think you know something of life: you just don’t 
know anything. It’s the goodness of the woman, it’s a 
revelation!” 

“That’s all right,” said I. “That’s how I hoped to 
hear you, Jim.” 

“And so the Flying Scud was a fraud,” he resumed. 
“T didn’t quite understand your letter, but I made out 
that.” 

“Fraud is a mild term for it,” said I. “The creditors 
will never believe what fools we were. And that re- 
minds me,” I continued, rejoicing in the transition, 
“how about the bankruptcy?” 

“You were lucky to be out of that,” answered Jim, 
shaking his head; “you were lucky not to see the 
papers. The Occidental called me a fifth-rate kerb- 
stone broker with water on the brain; another said I 
was a tree-frog that had got into the same meadow 
with Longhurst, and had blown myself out till I went 
pop. It was rough on a\ man in his honeymoon; so 
was what they said about my looks, and what I had 
on, and the way I perspired. But I braced myself up 


QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS 275 


with the Flying Scud. How did it exactly figure out 
anyway ? I don’t seem to catch on to that story, 
Loudon.” 

“The devil you don’t!” thinks I to myself; and then 
aloud: “You see we had neither one of us good luck. 
I didn’t do much more than cover current expenses; 
and you got floored immediately. How did we come 
to go so soon?” 

“Well, we'll have to have a talk over all this,” said 
Jim with a sudden start. “I should be getting ‘to my 
books; and I guess you had better go right away to 
Mamie. She’s at Speedy’s. She expects you with im- 
patience. She regards you in the light of a favourite 
brother, Loudon.” 

Any scheme was welcome ehiah allowed me to post- 
pone the hour of explanation, and avoid (were it only 
for a breathing space) the topic of the Flying Scud. 
I hastened accordingly to Bush Street. Mrs. Speedy, 
already rejoicing in the return of a spouse, hailed me 
with acclamation. ‘And it’s beautiful you’re looking, 
Mr. Dodd, my dear,” she was kind enough to say. 
“And a miracle that naygur waheenies let ye lave 
the oilands. I have my suspicions of Shpeedy,” she 
added, roguishly. “Did ye see him after the naygresses 
now?” 

I gave Speedy an unblemished character. 

“The one of ye will niver bethray the other,” said 
the playful dame, and ushered me into a bare room, 
where Mamie sat working a type-writer. 

I was touched by the cordiality of her greeting. 
With the prettiest gesture in the world she gave me 
both her hands; wheeled forth a chair; and produced, 
from a cupboard, a tin of my favourite tobacco and 
a book of my exclusive cigarette papers. 

“There!” she cried, “you see, Mr. Loudon, we were 
all prepared for you; the things were bought the very 
day you sailed.” 

I imagine she had always intended me a pleasant 
welcome; but the certain fervour of sincerity, which I 


9? 


276 THE WRECKER 


could not help remarking, flowed from an unexpected 
source. Captain Nares, with a kindness for which I 
can never be sufficiently grateful, had stolen a moment 
from his occupations, driven to call on Mamie, and 
drawn her a generous picture of my prowess at the 
wreck. She was careful not to breathe a word of this 
interview, till she had led me on to tell my adventures 
for myself.” 

“Ah! Captain Nares was better,” she cried, when I 
had done. ‘From your account, I have only learned 
one new thing, that you are modest as well as brave.” 

I cannot tell with what sort of disclamation I sought 
to reply. 

“Tt is of no use,” said Mamie. “I know a hero. 
And when I heard of your working all day like a 
common labourer, with your hands bleeding and your 
nails broken—and how you told the captain to ‘crack 
on’ (I think he said) in the storm, when he was terrified © 
himself—and the danger of that horrid mutiny’— 
(Nares had been obligingly dipping his brush in earth- 
quake and eclipse)—“‘and how it was all done, in part 
at least, for Jim and me—I felt we could never say how 
we admired and thanked you.” 

“Mamie,” I cried, “don’t talk of thanks; it is not a 
word to be used between friends. Jim and I have been 
prosperous together; now we shall be poor together. 
We've done our best, and that’s all that need be said. 
The next thing is for me to find a situation, and send 
you and Jim up country for a long holiday in the 
red-woods—for a holiday Jim has got to have.” 

“Jim can’t take your money, Mr. Loudon,” said 
Mamie. 

“Jim?” cried I. “He’s got to. Didn’t I take his?” 

Presently after, Jim himself arrived, and before he 
had yet done mopping his brow, he was at me with the 
accursed subject. “Now, Loudon,” said he, “here we 
are all together, the day’s work done and the evening 
before us; just start in with the whole story.” 

“One word on business first,” said I, speaking from 


QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS 277 


the lips outward, and meanwhile (in the private apart- 
ments of my brain) trying for the thousandth time to 
find some plausible arrangement of my story. “I 

want to have a notion how we stand about the bank- 
ruptcy.” 

“O, that’s ancient history,” cried Jim. “We paid 
seven cents, and a wonder we did as well. The re- 
ceiver———” (methought a spasm seized him at the 
name of this official, and he broke off). “But it’s all 
past and done with anyway; and what I want to get 
at is the facts about the wreck. I don’t seem to under- 
_ stand it; appears to me like as there was something 
underneath.” 

“There was nothing in it, anyway,” I said, with a 
forced laugh. 

“That’s what I want to judge of,” returned Jim. 

“How the mischief is it I can never keep you to 
that bankruptcy? It looks as if you avoided it,” said 
_ I—for a man in my situation, with unpardonable folly. 

“Don’t it look a little as if you were trying to avoid 
the wreck?” asked Jim. 

It was my own doing; there was no retreat. “My 
dear fellow, if you make a point of it, here goes!” said 
I, and launched with spurious gaiety into the current 
of my tale. I told it with point and spirit; described 
the island and the wreck, mimicked Anderson and the 
_ Chinese, maintained the suspense. . . My pen 
has stumbled on the fatal word. I maintained the 
suspense so well that it was never relieved; and when 
I stopped—lI dare not say concluded, where there was 
no conclusion—I found Jim and Mamie regarding me 
with surprise. 

“Well?” said Jim. 

“Well, that’s all,” said I. 

“But how do you explain it?” he asked. 

“T can’t explain it,” said I. 

Mamie wagged her head ominously. | 

“But, great Cesar’s ghost! the money was offered?” 
cried Jim. “It won’t do, Loudon; it’s nonsense, on the 





278 THE WRECKER 


face of it! I don’t say but what you and Nares did 
your best; I’m sure, of course, you did; but I do say, 
you got fooled. I say the stuff is in that ship to-day, 
and I say I mean to get it.” 

“There is nothing in the ship, I tell you, but old wood 
and iron!” said I. 

“Youll see,” said Jim. ‘Next time I go myself. Ill 
take Mamie for the trip; Longhurst won’t refuse me the 
expense of a schooner. You wait till I get the search- 
ing of her.” 

“But you can’t search her!” cried I. “She’s burned.” 

“Burned!” cried Mamie, starting a little from the at- 
titude of quiescent capacity in which she had hitherto 
sat to hear me, her hands folded in her lap. 

There was an appreciable pause. 

vet beg your pardon, Loudon,” began Jim at last, “but 
why in snakes did you burn her?” 

“It was an idea of Nares’s,” said I. 

“This is certainly the strangest circumstance of all,” 
observed Mamie. 

“I must say, Loudon, it does seem kind of un- 
expected,” added Jim. “It seems kind of crazy even. 
What did you—what did Nares expect to gain by burn- 
ing her?” 

“T don’t know; it didn’t seem to matter; we had got 
all there was to get,” said I. 

“That’s the very point,” cried Jim. “It was quite 
plain you hadn’t.” 

“What made you so sure?” asked Mamie. 

“How can I tell you?” I eried. “We had been all 
‘through her. We were sure; that’s all that I can say.” 

“T begin to think you were,” she returned, with a 
significant emphasis. 

Jim hurriedly intervened. ‘What I don’t quite make 
out, Loudon, is that you don’t seem to appreciate the 
peculiarities of the thing,” said he. “It doesn’t seem 
to have struck you same as it does me.” 

“Pshaw! why go on with this?” cried Mamie, 


QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS 279. 


suddenly rising. ‘Mr. Dodd is not telling us either 
what he thinks or what he knows.” 

“Mamie!” cried Jim. 

“You need not be concerned for his feelings, James; 
he is not concerned for yours,” returned the lady. “He 
dares not deny it besides. And this is not the first time 
he has practised reticence. Have you forgotten that 
he knew the address, and did not tell it you until that 
man had escaped?” 

Jim turned to me pleadingly; we were all on our 
feet. ‘Loudon,” he said, ‘you see Mamie has some 
fancy; and I must say there’s just a sort of a shadow 
of an excuse; for it 2s bewildering—even to me, Loudon, 
with my trained business intelligence. For God’s sake, 
clear it up.” 

“This serves me right,” said I. “I should not have 

tried to keep you in the dark; I should have told you 
at first that I was pledged to secrecy; I’ should have 
asked you to trust me in the beginning. It is all I can 
do now. There is more of the story, but it concerns 
none of us, and my tongue is tied. I have given my 
word of honour. You must trust me and try to forgive 
me.” 
“T daresay I am very stupid, Mr. Dodd,” began 
Mamie, with an alarming sweetness, “but I thought 
you went upon this trip as my husband’s representative 
and with my husband’s money? You tell us now that 
you are pledged, but I should have thought you were 
pledged first of all to James. You say it does not 
concern us; we are poor people, and my husband is 
sick, and it concerns us a great deal to understand how 
we come to have lost our money, and why our repre- 
sentative comes back to us with nothing. You ask that 
we should trust you; you do not seem to understand; 
the question’ we are asking ourselves is whether we 
have not trusted you too much.” 

“I do not ask you to trust me,” I replied. “I ask 
Jim. He knows me.” 

“You think you can do what you please with James; 


280 THE WRECKER 


you trust to his affection, do you not? And me, I sup- 
pose, you do not consider,” said Mamie. “But it was 
perhaps an unfortunate day for you when we were 
married, for I at least am not blind. The crew run 
away, the ship is sold for a great deal of money, you 
know that man’s address and you conceal it, you do 
not find what you were sent to look for, and yet you 
burn the ship; and now, when we ask explanations, 
you are pledged to secrecy! But I am pledged to no 
such thing; I will not stand by in silence and see my 
sick and ruined husband betrayed by his condescending 
friend. I will give you the truth for once. Mr. Dodd, 
you have been bought and sold.” 

“Mamie,” cried Jim, “no more of this! It’s me 
you're striking: it’s only me you hurt. You don’t 
know, you cannot understand these things. Why, to- 
day, if it hadn’t been for Loudon, I couldn’t have 
looked you in the face. He saved my honesty.” 

“T have heard plenty of this talk before,” she replied. 
“You are a sweet-hearted fool, and I love you for it. 
But I am a clear-headed woman; my eyes are open, 
and I understand this man’s hypocrisy. Did he not 
come here to-day and pretend he would take a situa- 
tion—pretend he would share his hard-earned wages 
with us until you were well? Pretend! It makes me 
furious! His wages! a share of his wages! That 
would have been your pittance, that would have been 
your share of the Flying Scud—you who worked and 
toiled for him when he was a beggar in the streets of 
Paris. But we do not want your charity; thank God, 
I can work for my own husband! See what it is to 
- have obliged a gentleman. He would let you pick him 
up when he was begging; he would stand and look on, 
and let you black his shoes, and sneer at you. For you 
were always sneering at my James; you always looked 
down upon him in your heart, you know it!” She 
turned back to Jim. ‘And now when he is rich,” she 
began, and then swooped again on me. “For you are 
rich, I dare you to deny it; I defy you to look me in 


QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS 281 


the face and try to deny that you are rich—rich with 
our money—my husband’s money re 

Heaven knows to what a height she might have 
risen, being, by this time, bodily whirled away in her 
own hurricane of words. Heart-sickness, a black de- 
pression, a treacherous sympathy with my assailant, 
pity unutterable for poor Jim, already filled, divided, 
and abashed my spirit. Flight seemed the only 
remedy; and making a private sign to Jim, as if to 
ask permission, I slunk from the unequal field. 

I was but a little way down the street when I was 
arrested by the sound of some one running, and Jim’s 
voice calling me by name. He had followed me with a 
letter which had been long awaiting my return. 

I took it in a dream. “This has been a devil of a 
business,” said I. 

“Don’t think hard of Mamie,” he pleaded. “It’s the 
way she’s made; it’s her high-toned loyalty. And of 
course I know it’s all right. I know your sterling 
character; but you didn’t, somehow, make out to give 
us the thing straight, Loudon. Anybody might have— 
I mean—I mean——-” 

“Never mind what you mean, my poor Jim,” said I. 
“She’s a gallant little woman and a loyal wife: and I 
thought her splendid. My story was as fishy as the 
devil. I'll never think the less of either her or you.” 

“Tt’ll blow over, it must blow over,’ said he. 

“Tt never can,” I returned, sighing: “and don’t you 
try to make it! Don’t name me, unless it’s with an 
oath. And get home to her right away. Good-bye, my 
best of friends. Good-bye, and God bless you. We 
shall never meet again.” 

“OQ Loudon, that we should live to say such words!” 
he cried. 

I had no views on life, beyond an occasional impulse 
to commit suicide, or get drunk, and drifted down the 
street, semi-conscious, walking apparently on air, in 
the light-headedness of grief. I had money in my 
pocket, whether mine or my creditors’ I had no means 





282 THE WRECKER 


of guessing; and the Poodle Dog lay in my path, I 
went mechanically in and took a table. A waiter at- 
tended me, and I suppose I gave my orders; for 
presently I found myself, with a sudden return of con- 
sciousness, beginning dinner. On the white cloth at 
my elbow lay the letter, addressed in a clerk’s hand, 
and bearing an English stamp and the Edinburgh post- 
mark. A bowl of bouillon and a glass of wine awak- 
ened one corner of my brain (where all the rest was 
in mourning, the blinds down as for a funeral) a faint 
stir of curiosity; and while I waited the next course, 
wondering the while what I had ordered, I opened and 
began to read the epoch-making document. 


“Dear Sir: I am charged with the melancholy duty 
of announcing to you the death of your excellent 
grandfather, Mr. Alexander Loudon, on the 17th ult. 
On Sunday thé 13th, he went to church as usual in the 
forenoon, and stopped on his way home, at the corner 
of Princes Street, in one of our seasonable east winds, 
to talk with an old friend. The same evening acute 
bronchitis declared itself; from the first, Dr. M’Combie 
anticipated a fatal result, and the old gentleman ap- 
peared to have no illusion as to his own state. He 
repeatedly assured me it was ‘by’ with him now; ‘and 
high time, too,’ he once added with characteristic 
asperity. He was not in the least changed on the ap- 
proach of death: only (what I am sure must be very 
grateful to your feelings) he seemed to think and speak 
-even more kindly than usual of yourself: referring to 
you as ‘Jeannie’s yin,’ with strong expressions of re- 
-gard. ‘He was the only one I ever liket of the hale 
jing-bang,’ was one of his expressions; and you will 
be glad to know that he dwelt particularly on the duti- 
ful respect you had always displayed in your relations. 
The small codicil, by which he bequeaths you his — 
Molesworth asd other professional works, was added 
(you will observe) on the day before his death; so that 
you were in his thoughts until the end. I should say 


wry 


QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS — 283 


that, though rather a trying patient, he was most ten- 
derly nursed by your uncle, and your cousin, Miss 
EKuphemia. I enclose a copy of the testament, by 
which you will see that you share equally with Mr. 
Adam, and that I hold at your disposal a sum nearly 
approaching seventeen thousand pounds. I beg to con- 
gratulate you on this considerable acquisition, and 
expect your orders, to which I shall hasten to give my 
best attention. Thinking that you might desire to re- 
turn at once to this country, and not knowing how you 
may be placed, I enclose a credit for six hundred 
pounds. Please sign the accompanying slip, and let me 
have it at your earliest convenience. 
“I am, dear sir, yours truly, 
“W. RUTHERFORD GREGG.” 


“God bless the old gentleman!” I thought; ‘and 
for that matter God bless Uncle Adam! and my cousin 
Euphemia! and Mr. Gregg!” I had a vision of that 
grey old life now brought to an end—‘“and high time 
too”—a vision of those Sabbath streets alternately 
vacant and filled with silent people; of the babel of 
the bells, the long-drawn psalmody, the shrewd sting 
of the east wind, the hollow, echoing, dreary house to 
which “Ecky” had returned with the hand of death 
already on his shoulder; a vision, too, of the long, 
rough country lad, perhaps a serious courtier of the 
lasses in the hawthorn den, perhaps a rustic dancer on 
the green, who had first earned and answered to that 
harsh diminutive. And I asked myself if, on the whole, 
poor Ecky had succeeded in life; if the last state of 
that man were not on the whole worse than the first; 
and the house in Randolph Crescent a less admirable 
dwelling than the hamlet where he saw the day and 
grew to manhood. Here was a consolatory thought 
for one who was himself a failure. 

Yes, I declare the word came in my mind; and all 
the while, in another partition of the brain, I was 
glowing and singing for my new-found opulence. The 


284 THE WRECKER 


pile of gold—four thousand two hundred and fifty 
double eagles, seventeen thousand ugly sovereigns, 
twenty-one thousand two hundred and fifty Napoleons 
—danced, and rang and ran molten, and lit up life with 
their effulgence, in the eye of fancy. Here were all 
things made plain to me: Paradise—Paris, 1 mean— 
Regained, Carthew protected, Jim restored, the cred- 
HoTsi ia Qrig 

“The creditors!” I repeated, and sank back be- 
numbed. It was all theirs to the last farthing: my 
grandfather had died too soon to save me. 

I must have somewhere a rare vein of decision. In 
that revolutionary moment, I found myself prepared 
for all extremes except the one: ready to do anything, 
or to go anywhere, so long as I might save my money. 
At the worst, there was flight, flight to some of those 
blest countries where the serpent, extradition, has not 
yet entered in. : 


On no condition is extradition 
Allowed in Callao! 


—the old lawless words haunted me; and I saw myself 
hugging my gold in the company of such men as had 
once made and sung them, in the rude and bloody 
wharf-side drinking shops of Chili and Peru. The 
run of my ill-luck, the breach of my old friendship, 
this bubble fortune flaunted for a moment in my eyes 
and snatched again, had made me desperate and (in 
the expressive vulgarism) ugly. To drink vile spirits 
among vile companions by the flare of a pine-torch; to” 
go burthened with my furtive treasure in a belt; to 
fight for it knife in hand, rolling on a clay floor; to 
flee perpetually in fresh ships and to be chased through 
the sea from isle to isle, seemed, in my then frame of 
mind, a welcome series of events. 

That was ‘for the worst; but it began to dawn slowly 
on my mind that there was yet a possible better. Once 
escaped, once safe in Callao, I might approach my 


QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS 285 


creditors with a good grace; and properly handled by 
a cunning agent, it was just possible they might accept 
some easy composition. The hope recalled me to the 
bankruptcy. It was strange, I reflected: often as I 
had questioned Jim, he had never obliged me with an 
answer. In his haste for news about the wreck, my 
own no less legitimate curiosity had gone disappointed. 
Hateful as the thought was to me, I must return at 
once and find out where I stood. 

I left my dinner still unfinished, paying for the 
whole of course, and tossing the waiter a gold piece. 
I was reckless; I knew not what was mine and cared 
not: I must take what I could get and give as I was 
able; to rob and to squander seemed the comple- 
mentary parts of my new destiny. I walked up Bush 
Street, whistling, brazening myself to confront Mamie 
in the first place, and the world at large and a certain 
visionary judge upon a bench in the second. Just 
outside, I stopped and lighted a cigar to give me 
greater countenance; and puffing this and wearing what 
(1 am sure) was a wretched assumption of braggadocio, 
I reappeared on the scene of my disgrace. 

My friend and his wife were finishing a poor meal— 
rags of cold mutton, the remainder cakes from break- 
fast eaten cold, and a starveling pot of coffee. 

“T beg your pardon, Mrs. Pinkerton,” said I. ‘Sorry 
to inflict my presence where it cannot be desired; but 
there is a piece of business necessary to be discussed.” 

“Pray do not consider me,” said Mamie, rising, and 
she sailed into the adjoining bedroom. 

Jim watched her go and shook his head; he looked 
miserably old and ill. 

“What is it now?” he asked. 

“Perhaps you remember you answered none of my 
questions,” said I. 

“Your questions?” faltered Jim. 

“FEiven so, Jim. My questions,” I repeated. “I put 
questions as well as yourself; and however little I may 


286 THE WRECKER 


have satisfied Mamie with my answers, I beg to remind 
you that you gave me none at all.” 

“You mean about the bankruptcy?” asked Jim. 

I nodded. 

He writhed in his chair. “The straight truth is, I 
was ashamed,” he said, “I was trying to dodge you. 
I’ve been playing fast and loose with you, Loudon; 
I’ve deceived you from the first, I blush to own it. 
And here you come home and put the very question I 
was fearing. Why did we bust so soon? Your keen 
business eye had not deceived you. That’s the point, 
that’s my shame; that’s what killed me this afternoon 
when Mamie was treating you so, and my conscience 
was telling me all the time, Thou art the man.” 

“What was it, Jim?” I asked. 

“What I had been at all the time, Loudon,” he 
wailed; ‘‘and I don’t know how I’m to look you in the 
face and say it, after my duplicity. It was stocks,” he 
added in a whisper. 

“And you were afraid to tell me that!” I cried. 
“You poor, old, cheerless dreamer! what would it 
matter what you did or didn’t? Can’t you see were 
doomed? And anyway, that’s not my point. It’s how 
I stand that I want to know. There is a particular 
reason. Am [I clear? Have I a certificate, or what 
have I to do to get one? And when will it be dated? 
You can’t think what hangs by it!” ie 

“That’s the worst of all,’ said Jim, like a man in a 
dream, “I can’t see how to tell him!” 

“What do you mean?” I cried, a small pang of terror 
at my heart. 

“Y’m afraid I sacrificed you, Loudon,” he said, look- 
ing at me pitifully. 

“Sacrificed me?” I repeated. “How? What do you 
mean by sacrifice?” 

“T know it’ll shock your delicate self-respect,” he 
said; “but. what was I to do? Things looked so bad. 
The receiver ” (as usual, the name stuck in his 
throat, and he began afresh). ‘There was a lot of 





he 


QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS 287 


talk; the reporters were after me already; there was 
the trouble and all about the Mexican business; and I 
got scared right out, and I guess I lost my head. You 
weren't there, you see, and that was my temptation.” 

I did not know how long he might thus beat about 
the bush with dreadful hintings, and I was already be- 
side myself with terror. What had he done? I saw 
he had been tempted; I knew from his letters that he 
was in no condition to resist. How had he sacrificed 
the absent? 

“Jim,” I said, ‘you must speak right out. T’ve got 
all that I can carry.” 

“Well,” he said—‘I know it was a liberty—I made 
it out you were no business man, only a stone-broke 
painter; that half the time you didn’t know anything 
anyway, particularly money and accounts. I said you 
never could be got to understand whose was whose. 
I had to say that because of some entries in the 
books ¥ 

“For God’s sake,” I cried, “put me out of this agony! 
What did you accuse me of?” 

“Accused you of?” repeated Jim. “Of what I’m tell- 
ing you. And there being no deed of partnership, I 
made out you were only a kind of clerk that I called 
a partner just to give you taffy; and so I got you 
ranked a creditor on the estate for your wages and 
the money you had lent. And——” 

I believe I reeled. “A creditor!” I roared; “a 
creditor! I’m not in the bankruptcy at all?” 

“No,” said Jim. “I know it was a liberty 

“OQ damn your liberty! read that,’ I cried, dashing 
the letter before him on the table, ‘‘and call in your 
wife, and be done with eating this truck”—as I spoke, 
I slung the cold mutton in the empty grate—‘“and let’s 
all go and have a champagne supper. I’ve dined—I’m 
sure I don’t remember what I had; I’d dine again ten 
scores of times upon a night like this. Read it, you 
blazing ass! I’m not insane. Here, Mamie,” I con- 
tinued, opening the bedroom door, “come out and make 





3 





288 THE WRECKER 


it up with me, and go and kiss your husband; and I'll 
tell you what, after supper, let’s go to some place 
where there’s a band, and Ill waltz with you till sun- 
- rise.” 

“What does it all mean?” cried Jim. 

“Tt means we have a champagne supper to-night, 
and all go to Napa Valley or to Monterey to-morrow,” 
said I. ‘Mamie, go and get your things on; and you, 
Jim, sit right down where you are, take a sheet of 
paper, and tell Franklin Dodge to go to ‘Texas. 
Mamie, you were right, my dear; I was rich all the 
time, and didn’t know it.” 


hy 


CHAPTER XIX 
TRAVELS WITH A SHYSTER 


HE absorbing and disastrous adventure of the 

Flying Scud was now quite ended; we had dashed 
into these deep waters and we had escaped again to 
starve, we had been ruined and were saved, had quar- 
relled and made up; there remained nothing but to 
sing Te Deum, draw a line, and begin on a fresh page 
of my unwritten diary. I do not pretend that I re- 
covered all I had lost with Mamie; it would have been 
more than I had merited; and I had certainly been 
more uncommunicative than became either the partner 
or the friend. But she accepted the position hand- 
somely; and during the week that I now passed with 
them, both she and Jim had the grace to spare me 
questions. It was to Calistoga that we went; there 
was some rumour of a Napa land-boom at the moment, 
the possibility of stir attracted Jim, and he informed 
me he would find a certain Joy in looking on, much as 
Napoleon on St. Helena took a pleasure to read mili- 
tary works. ‘The field of his ambition was quite 
closed; he was done with action; and looked forward 
to a ranch in a mountain dingle, a patch of corn, a pair 
of kine, a leisurely and contemplative age in the green 
shade of forests. “Just let me get down on my back 
in a hayfield,” said he, “and you'll find there’s no more 
snap to me than that much putty.” 

And for two days the perfervid being actually rested. 
The third, he was observed in consultation with the 
local editor, and owned he was in two minds about 
purchasing the press and paper. “It’s a kind of a 
hold for an idle man,” he said, pleadingly; “and if 

289 


290 THE WRECKER ‘* 


the section was to open up the way it ought to, there 
might be dollars in the thing.” On the fourth day he 
was gone till dinner-time alone; on the fifth we made 
a long picnic drive to the fresh field of enterprise; and 
the sixth was passed entirely in the preparation of 
prospectuses. The pioneer of McBride City was al- 
ready upright and self-reliant as of yore; the fire re- 
kindled in his eye, the ring restored to his voice; a 
charger sniffing battle and saying ha-ha among the 
spears. On the seventh morning we signed a deed of 
partnership, for Jim would not accept a dollar of my 
money otherwise; and having once more engaged my- 
self—or that mortal part of me, my purse—among the 
wheels of his machinery, I returned alone to San Fran- 
cisco and took quarters in the Palace Hotel. 

The same night I had Nares to dinner. His sun- 
burnt face, his queer and personal strain of talk, re- 
called days that were scarce over and that seemed 
already distant. Through the music of the band out- 
side, and the chink and clatter of the dining-room, it 
seemed to me as if I heard the foaming of the surf 
and the voices of the sea-birds about Midway Island. 
The bruises on our hands were not yet healed; and 
there we sat, waited on by elaborate darkies, eating 
pompino and drinking iced champagne. 

“Think of our dinners on the Norah, captain, and 
then oblige me by looking around the room for con- 
trast.” 

He took the scene in slowly. ‘Yes, it is like a 
dream,” he said: “like as if the darkies were really 
about as big as dimes; and a great big scuttle might 
open up there, and Johnson might stick in a great big 
head and shoulders, and ery, ‘Eight bells!"—and the 
whole thing vanish.” 

“Well, it’s the other thing that has done that,” I re- 
plied. “It’s all bygone now, all dead and _ buried. 
Amen! say I.” 

“T don’t know that, Mr. Dodd; and to tell you the 
fact, I don’t believe it,’ said Nares. ‘There’s more 


+5 


TRAVELS WITH A SHYSTER 291 


Flying Scud in the oven; and the baker’s name, I take 
it, is Bellairs. He tackled me the day we came in: 
sort of a razee of poor old humanity—jury clothes 
—full new suit of pimples: knew him at once from your 
description. I let him pump me till I saw his game. 
He knows a good deal that we don’t know, a good 
deal that we do, and suspects the balance. ‘There’s 
trouble brewing for somebody.” 

I was surprised I had not thought of this before. 
Bellairs had been behind the scenes; he had known 
Dickson; he knew the flight of the crew; it was hardly 
possible but what he should suspect; it was certain 
if he suspected, that he would seek to trade on the 
suspicion. And sure enough, I was not yet dressed the 
next morning ere the lawyer was knocking at my door. 
I let him in, for I was curious; and he, after some 
ambiguous prolegomena, roundly proposed I should 
go shares with him. 

“Shares in what?” I inquired. 

“Tf you will allow me to clothe my idea in a some- 
what vulgar form,” said he, “I might ask you, did you 
go to Midway for your health?” 

“T don’t know that I did,” I replied. 

“Similarly, Mr. Dodd, you may be sure I would 
never have taken the present step without influential 
grounds,” pursued the lawyer. “Intrusion is foreign to 
my character. But you and J, sir, are engaged on 
the same ends. If we can continue to work the thing 
in company, I place at your disposal my knowledge of 
the law and a considerable practice in delicate nego- 
tiations similar to this. Should you refuse to consent, 
you might find in me a formidable and”—he hesitated 
—‘and to my own regret, perhaps a dangerous com- 
petitor.” 

“Did you get this by heart?” I asked, genially. 

“T advise you to,” he said, with a sudden sparkle of 
temper and menace, instantly gone, instantly succeeded 
by fresh cringing. “I assure you, sir, I arrive in the 
character of a friend; and I believe you underestimate 


292 THE WRECKER 


my information. If I may instance an example, I am 
acquainted to the last dime with what you made (or 
rather lost), and I know you have since cashed a con- 
siderable draft on London.” 

“What do you infer?” I asked. 

“I know where that draft came from,” he cried, 
wincing back like one who has greatly dared, and in- 
stantly regrets the venture. , 

“So?” said I. 

“You forget I was Mr. Dickson’s confidential agent,” 
he explained. ‘You had his address, Mr. Dodd. We 
were the only two that he communicated with in San 
Francisco. You see my deductions are quite obvious: 
you see how open and frank I deal with you; as I 
should wish to do with any gentleman with whom IJ 
was conjoined in business. You see how much I know; 
and it can scarcely escape your strong common-sense, 
how much better it would be if I knew all. You can- 
not hope to get rid of me at this time of day, I have 
my place in the affair, I cannot be shaken off; I am, 
if you will excuse a rather technical pleasantry, an - 
encumbrance on the estate. The actual harm I can do, 
I leave you to valuate for yourself. But without going 
so far, Mr. Dodd, and without in any way incon- 
veniencing myself, I could make things very uncom- 
fortable. For instance, Mr. Pinkerton’s liquidation. 
You and I know, sir—and you better than I—on what — 
a large fund you draw. Is Mr. Pinkerton in the thing 
at all? It was you only who knew the address, and 
you were concealing it. Suppose I should communicate 
with Mr. Pinkerton i! 

“Look here!” I interrupted, “communicate with him 
(if you will permit me to clothe my idea in a vulgar 
shape) till you are blue in the face. There is only one 
person with whom I refuse to allow you to commun- 
icate farther, and that is myself. Good morning.” 

e could not conceal his rage, disappointment, and 
surprise; and in the passage (I have no doubt) was 
shaken by St. Vitus. 





=, 
= 


TRAVELS WITH A SHYSTER 293 


I was disgusted by this interview; it struck me hard 
to be suspected on all hands, and to hear again from 
this trafficker what I had heard already from Jim’s 
wife; and yet my strongest impression was different 
and might rather be described as an impersonal fear. 
There was something against nature in the man’s 
craven impudence; it was as though a lamb had butted 
me; such daring at the hands of such a dastard implied 
unchangeable resolve, a great pressure of necessity, and 
powerful means. I thought of the unknown Carthew, 
and it sickened me to see this ferret on his trail. 

Upon inquiry I found the lawyer was but just dis- 
barred for some malpractice; and the discovery added 
excessively to my disquiet. Here was a rascal without 
money or the means of making it, thrust out of the 
doors of his own trade, publicly shamed, and doubtless 
in a deuce of a bad temper with the universe. Here, 
on the other hand, was a man with a secret; rich, ter- 
rified, practically in hiding; who had been willing to 
pay ten thousand pounds for the bones of the Flying 
Scud. I slipped insensibly into a mental alliance with 
the victim; the business weighed on me; all day long, 
I was wondering how much the lawyer knew, how much 
he guessed, and when he would open his attack. 

Some of these problems are unsolved to this day; 
others were soon made clear. Where he got Carthew’s 
name is still a mystery; perhaps some sailor on the 
Tempest, perhaps my own sea-lawyer served him for a 
tool; but I was actually at his elbow when he learned 
the address. It fell so. One evening, when I had an 
engagement and was killing time until the hour, I 
chanced to walk in the court of the hotel while the 
band played. The place was bright as day with the 
electric light; and I recognised, at some distance among 


- the loiterers, the person of Bellairs in talk with a 


gentleman, whose face appeared familiar. It was cer- 
tainly some one I had seen, and seen recently; but who 
or where, I knew not. A porter standing hard by gave 
me the necessary hint. The stranger was an English 


294 THE WRECKER 


navy man, invalided home from Honolulu, where he — 
had left his ship; indeed it was only from the change 
of clothes and the effects of sickness that I had not im- 
mediately recognised my friend and correspondent, 
Lieutenant Sebright. 

The conjunction of these planets seeming ominous, 
I drew near; but it seemed Bellairs had done his busi- 
ness; he vanished in the crowd, and I found my officer 
alone. 

“Do you know whom you have been talking to, Mr. 
Sebright?” I began. 

“No,” said he. “I don’t know him from Adam. 
Anything wrong?” 

“He is a disreputable lawyer, recently disbarred,” 
said I. “I wish I had seen you in time. I trust you 
told him nothing about Carthew?” 

He flushed to his ears. “I’m awfully sorry,” he said. 
“He seemed civil, and I wanted to get rid of him. It 
was only the address he asked.” 

“And you gave it?” I cried. 

“T’m really awfully sorry,” said Sebright. “I’m - 
afraid I did.” 

“God forgive you!” was my only comment, and I 
turned my back upon the blunderer. 

The fat was in the fire now: Bellairs had the ad- 
dress, and I was the more deceived or Carthew would 
have news of him. So strong was this impression, and 
so painful, that the next morning I had the curiosity 
to pay the lawyer’s den a visit. An old woman was 
scrubbing the stair, and the board was down. 

“Lawyer Bellairs?” said the old woman. ‘Gone 
East this morning. There’s Lawyer Dean next block 
u + b 

I did not trouble Lawyer Dean, but walked slowly 
back to my hotel, ruminating as I went. The image of 

e old woman washing that desecrated stair had 
struck my fancy; it seemed that all the water-supply 
of the city and all the soap in the State would scarce 
suffice to cleanse it, it had been so long a clearing-house 


7a 


TRAVELS WITH A SHYSTER 295 


of dingy secrets and a factory of sordid fraud. And 
now the corner was untenanted; some judge, like a 
careful housewife, had knocked down the web, and the 
bloated spider was scuttling elsewhere after new vic- 
tims. I had of late (as I have said) insensibly taken 
sides with Carthew; now when his enemy was at his 
heels, my interest grew more warm; and I began to 
wonder if I could not help. The drama of the Flying 
Scud was entering on a new phase. It had been singu- 
jar irom the first: it promised an extraordinary con- 
clusion; and I who had paid so much to learn the be- 
binning might pay a little more and see the end. I 
lingered in San Francisco, indemnifying myself after 
the hardships of the cruise, spending money, regretting 
it, continually promising departure for the morrow. 
Why not go indeed, and keep a watch upon Bellairs? 
If I missed him, there was no harm done, I was the 
nearer Paris. If I found and kept his trail, it was 
hard if I could not put some stick in his machinery, 
and at the worst I could promise myself interesting 
scenes and revelations. 

In such a mixed humour, I made up what it pleases 
me to call my mind, and once more involved myself 
in the story of Carthew and the Flying Scud. The 
same night I wrote a letter of farewell to Jim, and 
one of anxious warning to Dr. Urquart begging him to 
set Carthew on his guard; the morrow saw me in the 
ferry-boat; and ten days later, I was walking the hur- 
ricane deck on the City of Denver. By that time my 
mind was pretty much made down again, its natural 
condition: I told myself that I was bound for Paris 
or Fontainebleau to resume the study of the arts; 
and I thought no more of Carthew or Bellairs, or only 
to smile at my own fondness. The one I could not 
serve, even if I wanted; the other I had no means of 
finding, even if I could have at all influenced him 
after he was found. 

And for all that, I was close on the heels of an absurd 
adventure. My neighbour at table that evening was a 


296 THE WRECKER 


‘Frisco man whom I knew slightly. I found he had 
crossed the plains two days in front of me, and this was 
the first steamer that had left New York for Europe 
since his arrival. Two days before me meant a day 
before Bellairs; and dinner was scarce done before I 
was closeted with the purser. 

“Bellairs?” he repeated. “Not in the saloon, I am 
sure. He may be in the second class. The lists are 
not made out, but—Hullo! ‘Harry D. Bellairs’? That 
the name? He’s there right enough.” 

And the next morning I saw him on the forward 
deck, sitting in a chair, a book in his hand, a shabby 
puma-skin rug about his knees: the picture of respec- 
table decay. Off and on, I kept him in my eye. He 
read a good deal, he stood and looked upon the sea, 
he talked occasionally with his neighbours, and once 
when a child fell he picked it up and soothed it. I 
damned him in my heart; the book, which I was sure 
he did not read—the sea, to which I was ready to take 
oath he was indifferent—the child, whom I was certain. 
he would as lieve have tossed overboard—all seemed 
to me elements in a theatrical performance; and IL 
made no doubt he was already nosing after the secrets 
of his fellow-passengers. I took no pains to conceal 
myself, my scorn for the creature being as strong as 
my disgust. But he never looked my way, and it was 
night before I learned he had observed me. 

I was smoking by the engine-room door, for the air 
- was a little sharp, when a voice rose close beside me in 

the darkness. 

“T beg your pardon, Mr. Dodd?” it said. 

“That you, Bellairs?” I replied. 

“A single word, sir. Your presence on this ship has 
no connection with our interview?” he asked. “You 
have no idea, Mr. Dodd, of returning upon your deter- 
“mination?” 

“None,” said I; and then, seeing he still lingered, I 
was polite enough to add “Good evening”; at which 
he sighed and went away. 


TRAVELS WITH A SHYSTER 297 


The next day, he was there again with the chair and 
the puma skin; read his book and looked at the sea 
with the same constancy; and though there was no 
child to be picked up, I observed him to attend re- 
peatedly on a sick woman. Nothing fosters suspicion 
like the act of watching; a man spied upon can hardly 
blow his nose but we accuse him of designs; and I 
took an early opportunity to go forward and see the 
woman for myself. She was poor, elderly, and pain- 
fully plain; I stood abashed at the sight, felt I owed 
Bellairs amends for the injustice of my thoughts, and 
seeing him standing by the rail in his usual attitude 
of contemplation, walked up and addressed him by 
name. 

“You seem very fond of the sea,” said I. 

“T may really call it a passion, Mr. Dodd,” he re- 
plied. “And the tall cataract haunted me like a pas- 
sion,” he quoted. “I never weary of the sea, sir. This 
is my first ocean voyage. I find it a glorious experi- 
ence.” And once more my disbarred lawyer dropped 
into poetry: “Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, 
roll!” 

Though I had learned the piece in my reading-book 
at school, I came into the world a little too late on 
the one hand—and I daresay a little too early on the 
other—to think much of Byron; and the sonorous verse, 
prodigiously well delivered, struck me with surprise. 

“You are fond of poetry, too?” I asked. 

“T am a great reader,” he replied. “At one time I 
had begun to amass quite a small but well selected 
library; and when that was scattered, I still managed 
to preserve a few volumes—chiefly of pieces designed 
for recitation—which have been my travelling com- 
panions.”’ 

“Ts that one of them?” I asked, pointing to the 
volume in his hand. 

“No, sir,” he replied, showing me a translation of the 
Sorrows of Werther, “that is a novel I picked up some 


298 THE WRECKER 


time ago. It has afforded me great pleasure, though 
immoral.” 

“O, immoral!” cried I, indignant as usual at any 
implication of art and ethics. 

“Surely you cannot deny that, sir—if you know the 
book,” he said. “The passion is illicit, although cer- 
tainly drawn with a good deal of pathos. It is not a 
work one could possibly put into the hands of a lady; 
which is to be regretted on all accounts, for I do not 
know how it may strike ycu; but it seems to me—as a 
depiction, if I make myself clear—to rise high above 
its compeers, even famous compeers. Even in Scott, 
Dickens, Thackeray, or Hawthorne, the sentiment of 
love appears to me to be frequently done less justice 
to.”” 

“You are expressing a very general opinion,” said I. 

“Ts that so, indeed, sir?” he exclaimed, with unmis- 
takable excitement. “Is the book well known? and 
who was Go-eath? I am interested in that, because 
upon the title-page the usual initials are omitted, and 
it runs simply ‘by Go-eath.’ Was he an author of 
distinction? Has he written other works?” 

Such was our first interview, the first of many, and 
in all he showed the same attractive qualities and de- 
fects. His taste for literature was native and un- 
affected; his sentimentality, although extreme and a 
thought ridiculous, was plainly genuine. I wondered 
at my own innocent wonder. I knew that Homer 
nodded, that Ceasar had compiled a jest-book, that 
Turner lived by preference the life of Puggy Booth, 
that Shelley made paper boats, and Wordsworth wore 
green spectacles! and with all this mass of evidence 
before me, I had expected Bellairs to be entirely of 
one piece, subdued to what he worked in, a spy all 
through. As I abominated the man’s trade, so I had 
expected to detest the man himself; and behold, I liked 
him. Poor devil! he was essentially a man on wires, 
all sensibility and tremor, brimful of a cheap poetry, 
not without parts, quite without eourage. His 


TRAVELS WITH A SHYSTER 299 


boldness was despair; the gulf behind him thrust him 
on; he was one of those who might commit a murder 
rather than confess the theft of a postage-stamp. I 
was sure that his coming interview with Carthew rode 
his imagination like a nightmare; when the thought 
crossed his mind, I used to think I knew of it, and 
that the qualm appeared in his face visibly. Yet he 
would never flinch: necessity stalking at his back, 
famine (his old pursuer) talking in his ear; and I 
used to wonder whether I most admired, or most de- 
spised, this quivering heroism for evil. The image that 
occurred to me after his visit was just; I had been 
butted by a lamb; and the phase of life that I was now 
studying might be called the Revolt of a Sheep. 

It could be said of him that he had learned in sorrow 
what he taught in song—or wrong; and his life was 
that of one of his victims. He was born in the back 
parts of the State of New York; his father a farmer, 
who became subsequently bankrupt and went West. 
The lawyer and money-lender who had ruined this 
poor family seems to have conceived in the end a 
feeling of remorse; he turned the father out indeed, but 
he offered, in compensation, to charge himself with one 
of the sons: and Harry, the fifth child and already 
sickly, was chosen to be left behind. He made himself 
useful in the office; picked up the scattered rudiments 
of an education; read right and left; attended and 
debated at the Young Men’s Christian Association; 
and in all his early years, was the model for a good 
story-book. His landlady’s daughter was his bane. 
He showed me her photograph; she was a big, hand- 
some, dashing, dressy, vulgar hussy, without character, 
without tenderness, without mind, and (as the result 
proved) without virtue. The sickly and timid boy was 
in the house; he was handy; when she was otherwise 
unoccupied, she used and played with him: Romeo and 
Cressida; till in that dreary life of a poor boy in a 
country town, she grew to be the light of his days and 
the subject of his dreams. He worked hard, like 


300 THE WRECKER 


Jacob, for a wife; he surpassed his patron in sharp. 
practice; he was made head clerk; and the same night, 
encouraged by a hundred freedoms, depressed by the 
sense of his youth and his infirmities, he offered mar- 
riage and was received with laughter. Not a year had 
passed, before his master, conscious of growing infirm- 
ities, took him for a partner; he proposed again; he 
was accepted; led two years of troubled married life; 
and awoke one morning to find his wife had run away 
with a dashing drummer, and had left him heavily in 
debt. The debt, and not the drummer, was supposed 
to be the cause of the hegira; she had concealed her 
habilities, they were on the point of bursting forth, 
she was weary of Bellairs; and she took the drummer 
as she might have taken a cab. The blow disabled her 
husband; his partner was dead; he was now alone in 
the business, for which he was no longer fit; the debts 
hampered him; bankruptcy followed; and he fled from 
city to city, falling daily into lower practice. It is to 
be considered that he had been taught, and had learned 
as a delightful duty, a kind of business whose highest 
merit is to escape the commentaries of the bench: that 
of the usurious lawyer in a county town. With this 
training, he was now shot, a penniless stranger, into 
the deeper gulfs of cities; and the result is scarce a 
thing to be surprised at. 

“Have you heard of your wife again?” I asked. 

He displayed a pitiful agitation. “I am afraid you 
will think ill of me,” he said. 

“Have you taken her back?” I asked. 

“No, sir. I trust I have too much self-respect,” he 
~ answered, “and, at least, 1 was never tempted. She 
won’t come, she dislikes, she seems to have conceived a 
positive distaste for me, and yet I was considered an 
indulgent husband.” 

“You are still in relations, then?” I asked. 

“I place myself in your hands, Mr. Dodd,” he re- 
plied. ‘The world is very hard; I have found it bitter 
hard myself—bitter hard to live. How much worse for 


TRAVELS WITH A SHYSTER 301 


_@ woman, and one who has placed herself (by her own 
misconduct, | am far from denying that) in so unfor- 
tunate a position!” 

“In short, you support her?” I suggested. 

“T cannot deny it. I practically do,” he admitted. 
“It has been a millstone round my neck. But I think 
she is grateful. You can see for yourself.” 

He handed me a letter in a sprawling, ignorant hand, 
but written with violet ink on fine, pink paper with a 
monogram. It was very foolishly expressed, and I 
thought (except for a few obvious cajoleries) very 
heartless and greedy in meaning. The writer said she 
had been sick, which I disbelieved; declared the last 
remittance was all gone in doctor’s bills, for which I 
took the liberty of substituting dress, drink, and mono- 
grams; and prayed for an increase, which I could only 
hope had been denied her. 

“T think she is really grateful?” he asked, with some 
eagerness, as I returned it. 

“T daresay,” said I. “Has she any claim on you?” 

“O, no, sir. I divorced her,” he replied. “I have a 
very strong sense of self-respect in such matters, and 
I divorced her immediately.” 

“What sort of life is she leading now?” I asked. 

“T will not deceive you, Mr. Dodd. I do not know, 
I make a point of not knowing; it appears more dig- 
nified. I have been very harshly criticised,” he added, 
sighing. 

It will be seen that I had fallen into an ignominious 
intimacy with the man I had gone out to thwart. My 
pity for the creature, his admiration for myself, his 
pleasure in my society, which was clearly unassumed, 
were the bonds with which I was fettered; perhaps I 
should add, in honesty, my own ill-regulated interest 
in the phases of life and human character. The fact 
is (at least) that we spent hours together daily, and 
that I was nearly as much on the forward deck as in 
the saloon. Yet all the while I could never forget he 
was a shabby trickster, embarked that very moment in 


302 THE WRECKER 


a dirty enterprise. I used to tell myself at first that 
our acquaintance was a stroke of art, and that I was 
somehow fortifying Carthew. I told myself, I say; 
but I was no such fool as to believe it, even then. In 
these circumstances I displayed the two chief qualities 
of my character on the largest scale—my helplessness 
and my instinctive love of procrastination—and fell 
upon a course of action so ridiculous that I blush when 
I recall it, 

We reached Liverpool one forenoon, the rain falling 
thickly and insidiously on the filthy town. I had no 
plans, beyond a sensible unwillingness to let my rascal 
escape; and I ended by going to the same inn with 
him, dining with him, walking with him in the wet 
streets, and hearing with him in a penny gaff the ven- 
erable piece, The Ticket-of-Leave Man. It was one 
of his first visits to a theatre, against which places of 
entertainment he had a strong prejudice; and his in- 
nocent, pompous talk, innocent old quotations, and in- 
nocent reverence for the character of Hawkshaw 
delighted me beyond relief. In charity to myself, I 
dwell upon and perhaps exaggerate my pleasures. I 
have need of all conceivable excuses, when I confess 
that I went to bed without one word upon the matter 
of Carthew, but not without having covenanted with 
my rascal for a visit to Chester the next day. At 
Chester we did the cathedral, walked on the walls, dis- 
cussed Shakespeare and the musical glasses—and made 
a fresh engagement for the morrow. I do not know, 
and I am glad to have forgotten, how long these 
_ travels were continued. We visited at least, by singu- 
lar zigzags, Stratford, Warwick, Coventry, Gloucester, 
Bristol, Bath, and Wells. At each stage we spoke 
dutifully of the scene and its associations; I sketched, 
the Shyster spouted poetry and copied epitaphs. Who 
could doubt we were the usual Americans, travelling 
with a design of self-improvement? Who was to guess 
that one was a blackmailer, trembling to approach the 
scene of action—the other a helpless, amateur detective, 


TRAVELS WITH A SHYSTER 303 


waiting on events. It is unnecessary to remark 
that none occurred, or none the least suitable with my 
design of protecting Carthew. Two trifles, indeed, 
completed though they scarcely changed my conception 
of the Shyster. The first was observed in Gloucester, 
where we spent:Sunday, and I proposed we should hear 
service in the cathedral. To my surprise, the creature 
had an ism of his own, to which he was loyal; and he 
left me to go alone to the cathedral—or perhaps not 
to go at all—and stole off down a deserted alley to 
some Bethel or Ebenezer of the proper shade. When 
we met again at lunch, I rallied him, and he grew 
restive. 

“You need employ no circumlocutions with me, Mr. 
Dodd,” he said, suddenly. ‘‘You regard my behaviour 
from an unfavourable point of view: you regard me, 
I much fear, as hypocritical.” 7 

I was somewhat confused by the attack. “You know 
what I think of your trade,” I replied lamely and 
coarsely. 

“Excuse me, if I seem to press the subject,” he con- 
tinued, “but if you think my life erroneous, would you 
have me neglect the means of grace? Because you 
consider me in the wrong on one point, would you have 
me place myself on the wrong in all? Surely, sir, the 
Church is for the sinner.” 

“Did you ask a blessing on your present enterprise?” 
I sneered. 

He had a bad attack of St. Vitus, his face was 
changed, and his eyes flashed. ‘I will tell you what I 
did!” he cried. “I prayed for an unfortunate man 
and a wretched woman whom he tries to support.” 

I cannot pretend that I found any repartee. 

The second incident was at Bristol, where I lost 
sight of my gentleman some hours. From this eclipse, 
he returned to me with thick speech, wandering foot- 
steps, and a back all whitened with plaster. I had half 
expected, yet I could have wept to see it. All dis- 
abilities were piled on that weak back—domestic 


Ms, 


304 THE WRECKER 


misfortune, nervous disease, a displeasing exterior, 
empty pockets, and the slavery of vice. 

I will never deny that our prolonged conjunction was 
the result of double cowardice. Each was afraid to leave 
the other, each was afraid to speak, or knew not what 
to say. Save for my ill-judged allusion at Glouces- 
ter, the subject uppermost in both our minds was 
buried. Carthew, Stallbridge-le-Carthew, Stallbridge- 
Minster—which we had long since (and _ severally) 
identified to be the nearest station—even the name of 
Dorsetshire was studiously avoided. And yet we were 
making progress all the time, tacking across broad Eng- 
land like an unweatherly vessel on a wind; approach- 
ing our destination, not openly, but by a sort of flying 
sap. And at length, I can scarce tell how, we were 
set down by a dilatory butt-end of local train on the 
untenanted platform of Stallbridge-Minster. 

The town was ancient and compact: a domino of 
tiled houses and walled gardens, dwarfed by the dis- 
proportionate bigness of the church. From the midst 
of the thoroughfare which divided it in half, fields and 
trees were visible at either end; and through the sally- 
port of every street, there flowed in from the country 
a silent invasion of green grass. Bees and birds ap- 
peared to make the majority of the inhabitants; every 
garden had its row of hives, the eaves of every house 
were plastered with the nests of swallows and the pin- 
nacles of the church were flickered about all day long 
by a multitude of wings. The town was of Roman 
foundation; and as I looked out that afternoon from 


~ the low windows of the inn, I should scarce have been 


surprised to see a centurion coming up the street with 
a fatigue draft of legionaries. In short, Stallbridge- 
Minster was one of those towns which appear to be 
maintained by England for the instruction and delight 
of the American rambler; to which he seems guided by 
an instinct not less surprising than the setter’s; and 
which he visits and quits with equal enthusiasm. 

I was not at all in the humour of the tourist. I had 


TRAVELS WITH A SHYSTER 305 


wasted weeks of time and accomplished nothing; we 
were on the eve of the engagement, and I had neither 
plans nor allies; I had thrust myself into the trade of 
private providence and amateur detective; I was 
spending money and I was reaping disgrace. All the 
time, I kept telling myself that I must at least speak; 
that this ignominious silence should have been broken 
long. ago, and must.be broken now. I should have 
broken it when he first proposed to come to Stallbridge- 
Minster; I should have broken it in the train; I should 
break it there and then, on the inn doorstep, as the 
omnibus rolled off. I turned towards him at the 
thought; he seemed to wince, the words died on my 
lips, and I proposed instead that we should visit the 
Minster. 

While we were engaged upon this duty, it came on 
to rain in a manner worthy of the tropics. The vault 
reverberated: every gargoyl instantly poured its full 
discharge; we waded back to the inn, ankle deep in 
impromptu brooks; and the rest of the afternoon sat 
weatherbound, hearkening to the sonorous deluge. For 
two hours I talked of indifferent matters, laboriously 
feeding the conversation; for two hours my mind was 
quite made up to do my duty instantly—and at each 
particular instant I postponed it till the next. To 
screw up my faltering courage, I called at dinner for 
some sparkling wine. It proved when it came to be 
detestable; I could not put it to my lips; and Bellairs, 
who had as much palate as a weevil, was left to finish 
it himself. Doubtless the wine flushed him; doubtless 
he may have observed my embarrassment of the after- 
noon; doubtless he was conscious that we were ap- 
proaching a crisis, and that that evening, if I did not 
join with him, I must declare myself an open enemy. 
At least he fled. Dinner was done; this was the time 
when I had bound myself to break my silence; no more 
delays were to be allowed, no more excuses received. 
I went upstairs after some tobacco; which I felt to be 
a mere necessity in the circumstances; and when I 


306 THE WRECKER 


returned, the man was gone. The waiter told me he — 
had left the house. 

The rain still plumped, like a vast shower-bath, over 
the deserted town. The night was dark and windless: 
the street lit glimmeringly from end to end, lamps, © 
house windows, and the reflections in the rain-pools 
all contributing. From a public-house on the other 
side of the way, I heard a harp twang and a dole- 
ful voice upraised in the “Larboard Watch,’ “The 
Anchor’s Weighed,” and other naval ditties. Where 
had my Shyster wandered? In all likelihood to that 
lyrical tavern; there was no choice of diversion; in 
comparison with Stallbridge-Minster on a rainy night, 
a sheepfold would seem gay. 

Again I passed in review the points of my interview, 
on which I was always constantly resolved so long as 
my adversary was absent from the scene: and again 
they struck me as inadequate. From this dispiriting 
exercise I turned to the native amusements of the inn 
coffee-room, and studied for some time the mezzotints 
that frowned upon the wall. The railway guide, after 
showing me how I could leave Stallbridge and how 
quickly I could reach Paris, failed to hold my atten- 
tion. An illustrated advertisement book of hotels 
brought me very low indeed; and when it came to the 
local paper, I could have wept. At this point, I found 
a passing solace in a copy of Whitaker’s Almanac, and 
obtained in fifty minutes more information than I have 
yet been able to use. 

Then a fresh apprehension assailed me. Suppose 


_ Bellairs had given me the slip? suppose he was now 


rolling on the road to Stallbridge-le-Carthew? or per- 
haps there already and laying before a very white- 
faced auditor his threats and propositions? A hasty 
person might have instantly pursued. Whatever I am, 
I am not hasty, and I was aware of three grave ob- 
jections. In the first place, I could not be certain 
that Bellairs was gone. In the second, I had no taste 
whatever for a long drive at that hour of the night 


TRAVELS WITH A SHYSTER 307 


and in so merciless a rain. In the third, I had no idea 
how I was to get admitted if I went, and no idea what 
I should say if I got admitted. “In short,” I con- 
cluded, ‘“‘the whole situation is the merest farce. You 
have thrust yourself in where you had no business and 
have no power. You would be quite as useful in San 
Francisco; far happier in Paris; and being (by the 
wrath of God) at Stallbridge-Minster, the wisest thing 
is to go quietly to bed.” On the way to my room, I 
saw (in a flash) that which I ought to have done long 
ago, and which it was now too late to think of— 
written to Carthew, I mean, detailing the facts and de- 
scribing Bellairs, letting him defend himself if he were 
able, and giving him time to flee if he were not. It 
was the last blow to my self-respect; and I flung myself 
into my bed with contumely. 

I have no guess what hour it was, when-I was awak- 
ened by the entrance of Bellairs carrying a candle. 
He had been drunk, for he was bedaubed with mire 
from head to foot; but he was now sober and under 
the empire of some violent emotion which he controlled 
with difficulty. He trembled visibly; and more than 
once, during the interview which followed, tears sud- 
denly and silently overflowed his cheeks. 

“T have to ask your pardon, sir, for this untimely 
visit,” he said. “I make no defence, I have no excuse, 
I have disgraced myself, I am properly punished; I 
appear before you to appeal to you in mercy for the 
most trifling aid or, God help me! I fear I may go 
mad.” 

“What on earth is wrong?” I asked. 

“T have been robbed,” he said. “I have no defence 
to offer; it was of my own fault, I am properly pun- 
ished.” 

“But, gracious goodness me!” I cried, “who is there 
to rob you in a place like this?” 

“I can form no opinion,” he replied. “I have no 
idea. I was lying in a ditch inanimate. This is a 
degrading confession, sir; I can only say in self-defence 


308 ‘THE WRECKER 


that perhaps (in your good nature) you have made 
yourself partly responsible for my shame. I am not 
used to these rich wines.” 

“In what form was your money? Perhaps it may be 
traced,” I suggested. 

“Tt was in English sovereigns. I changed it in New 
York; I got very good exchange,” he said, and then, 
with a momentary outbreak, “God in heaven, how I 
toiled for it!” he cried. 

“That doesn’t sound encouraging,” said I. “It may 
be worth while to apply to the police, but it doesn’t 
sound a hopeful case.” 

“And I have no hope in that direction,” said Bellairs. 
“My hopes, Mr. Dodd, are all fixed upon yourself. 
I could easily convince you that a small, a very small 
advance, would be in the nature of an excellent invest- 
ment; but I prefer to rely on your humanity. Our 
acquaintance began on an unusual footing; but you 
have now known me for some time, we have been 
some time—I was going to say we had been almost 
intimate. Under the impulse of instinctive sympathy, 
I have bared my heart to you, Mr. Dodd, as I have 
done to few; and I believe—I trust—I may say that 
I feel sure—you heard me with a kindly sentiment. 
This is what brings me to your side at this most in- 
excusable hour. But put yourself in my place—how 
could I sleep—how could I dream of sleeping, in this 
blackness of remorse and despair? There was a friend 
at hand—so I ventured to think of you; it was in- 
stinctive; I fled to your side, as the drowning man 
clutches at a straw. These expressions are not exag- 
gerated, they scarcely serve to express the agitation of 
my mind. And think, sir, how easily you can restore 
me to hope and, I may say, to reason. A small loan, 
which shall be faithfully repaid. Five hundred dollars 
would be ample.” He watched me with burning eyes. 
“Four hundred would do. I believe, Mr. Dodd, that 
I could manage with economy on two.” 

“And then you will repay me out of Carthew’s 


ie 


TRAVELS WITH A SHYSTER 309 


pocket?” I said. “I am much obliged. But I will tell 


you what I will do: I will see you on board a steamer, 
pay your fare through to San Francisco, and place 
fifty dollars in the purser’s hands, to be given you in 
New York.” 

He drank in my words; his face represented an 
ecstasy of cunning thought. I could read there as plain 
as print, that he but thought to overreach me. 

“And what am I to do in ’Frisco?” he asked. “I am 
disbarred, I have no trade, I cannot dig, to beg Z 
he paused in the citation. “And you know that I am 
not alone,” he added, “others depend upon me.’ 

“T will write to Pinkerton, ” T returned. “I feel sure 
he can help you to some employment, and in the mean- 





_ time, and for three months after your arrival, he shall 


pay to yourself personally, on the first and fifteenth, 
twenty-five dollars.” 

“Mr. Dodd, I scarce believe you can be serious in 
this offer,” he replied. “Have you forgotten the cir- 
cumstances of the case? Do you know these people 
are the magnates of the section? They were spoken 
of to-night in the saloon; their wealth must amount 
to many millions of dollars in real estate alone; their 
house is one of the sights of the locality, and you offer 
me a bribe of a few hundred!” 

“T offer you no bribe, Mr. Bellairs, I give you alms,” 


I returned. “I will do nothing to forward you in your 


hateful business; yet I would not willingly have you 
starve.” 

“Cive me a hundred dollars then, and be done with 
it,” he cried. 

“T will do what I have said, and neither more nor 
less,” said I. 

“Take care,” he cried. “You are playing a fool’s 


game; you are making an enemy for nothing; you will 


gain nothing by this, | warn you of it!” And then with 
one of his changes, “Seventy dollars—only seventy— 
in mercy, Mr. Dodd, in common charity. Don’t dash 


310 THE WRECKER . 
the bowl from my lips! You have a kindly heart. 
Think of my position, remember my unhappy wife.” 

“You should have thought of her before,” said J. “I 
have made my offer, and I wish to sleep.” 

“Ts that your last word, sir? Pray consider; pray 
weigh both sides: my misery, your own danger. I 
warn you—I beseech you; measure it well before you 
answer,’ so he half pleaded, half threatened me, with 
clasped hands. 

“My first word, and my last,” said I. 

The change upon the man was shocking. In the 
storm of anger that now shook him, the lees of his 
intoxication rose again to the surface; his face was 
deformed, his words insane with fury; his pantomime, 
excessive in itself, was distorted by an access of St. 
Vitus. 

“You will perhaps allow me to inform you of my 
cold opinion,” he began, apparently self-possessed, 
truly bursting with rage: ‘when I am a glorified saint, 
I shall see you howling for a drop of water and exult 
to see you. That your last word! Take it in your 
face, you spy, you false friend, you fat hypocrite! I 
defy, I defy and despise and spit upon you! I’m on 
the trail, his trail or yours, I smell blood, I'll follow 
it on my hands and knees, I'll starve to follow it! 
I'll hunt you down, hunt you, hunt you down! If 
I were strong, I’d tear your vitals out, here in this 
room—tear them out—I’d tear them out! Damn, 
_ damn, damn! You think me weak? I can bite, bite to 

‘the blood, bite you, hurt you, disgrace you ir 
He was thus incoherently raging, when the scene was 

interrupted by the arrival of the landlord and inn 

servants In various degrees of deshabille, and to them 
- I gave my temporary lunatic in charge. 
« “Take him to his room,” I said, “he’s only drunk.” 
These were my words; but I knew better. After all 
my study of Mr. Bellairs, one discovery had been re- 
served for the last moment: that of his latent and 
essential madness. 


CHAPTER XX 
STALLBRIDGE-LE-CARTHEW 


ONG before I was awake, the Shyster had disap- 

peared leaving his bill unpaid. I did not need 
to inquire where he was gone, I knew too well, I knew 
there was nothing left me but to follow; and about ten 
in the morning, set forth in a gig for Stallbridge-le- 
Carthew. 

The road, for the first quarter of the way, deserts the 
valley of the river, and crosses the summit of a chalk- 
down, grazed over by flocks of sheep and haunted by 
innumerable larks. It was a pleasant but a vacant 
scene, arousing but not holding the attention; and my 
mind returned to the violent passage of the night be- 
fore. My thought of the man I was pursuing had been 
greatly changed. I conceived of him, somewhere in 
front of me, upon his dangerous errand, not to be 
' turned aside, not to be stopped, by either fear or 
reason. I had called him a ferret; I conceived him now 
as a mad dog. Methought he would run, not walk; 
methought, as he ran, that he would bark and froth 
at the lips; methought, if the great wall of China were 
to rise across his path, he would attack it with his nails. 

Presently the road left the town, returned by a 
precipitous descent into the valley of the Stall, and ran 
thenceforward among enclosed fields and under the 
continuous shade of trees. I was told we had now en- 
tered on the Carthew property. By and by, a battle- 
mented wall appeared on the left hand, and a little 
after I had my first glimpse of the mansion. It stood 
in the hollow of a bosky park, crowded to a degree that 
surprised and even displeased me, with huge timber 

dll 


312 THE WRECKER | 


and dense shrubberies of laurel and rhododendron. 
_Even from this low station and the thronging neigh- 
bourhood of the trees, the pile rose conspicuous like a 
cathedral. Behind, as we continued to skirt the park 
wall, I began to make out a straggling town of offices 
which became conjoined to the rear with those of the 
home farm. On the left was an ornamental water 
sailed in by many swans. On the right extended a 
flower garden, laid in the old manner, and at this 
season of the year, as brilliant as stained glass. The 
front of the house presented a facade of more than 
sixty windows, surmounted by a formal pediment and 
raised upon a terrace. A wide avenue, part in gravel, 
part in turf, and bordered by triple alleys, ran to the 
great double gateways. It was impossible to look 
without surprise on a place that had been prepared 
through so many generations, had cost so many tons 
of minted gold, and was maintained in order by so 
great a company of emulous servants. And yet of 
these there was no sign but the perfection of their 
work. The whole domain was drawn to the line and 
weeded like the front plot of some suburban amateur; 
and I looked in vain for any belated gardener, and 
listened in vain for any sounds of labour. Some lowing 
cattle and much calling of birds alone disturbed the 
stillness, and even the little hamlet, which clustered 
at the gates, appeared to hold its breath in awe of its 
great neighbour, like a troop of children who should 
have strayed into a king’s ante-room. 

_ The Carthew Arms, the small but very comfortable 
inn, was a mere appendage and outpost of the family 
whose name it bore. Engraved portraits of bygone 
Carthews adorned the walls; Fielding Carthew, Re- 
corder of the City of London; Major-General John 
Carthew in uniform, commanding some military opera- 
tions; the Right Honourable Bailley Carthew, Member 
of Parliament for Stallbridge, standing by a table and 
brandishing a document; Singleton Carthew, Esquire, 
represented in the foreground of a herd of cattle— 


STALLBRIDGE-LE-CARTHEW 313 


doubtless at the desire of his tenantry who had made 
him a compliment of this work of art; and the Ven- 
erable Archdeacon Carthew, D.D., LL.D., A.M., laying 
his hand on the head of a little child in a manner 
highly frigid and ridiculous. So far as my memory 
serves me, there were no other pictures in this exclusive 
hostelry; and I was not surprised to learn that the 
landlord was an ex-butler, the landlady an ex-lady’s- 
maid, from the great house; and that the bar-parlour 
was a sort of perquisite of former servants. 

To an American, the sense of the domination of this 
family over so considerable a tract of earth was even 
oppressive; and as I considered their simple annals, 
gathered from the legends of the engravings, surprise 
began to mingle with my disgust. “Mr. Recorder” 
doubtless occupies an honourable post; but I thought 
that, in the course of so many generations, one Carthew 
might have clambered higher. The soldier had struck 
at Major-General; the churchman bloomed unre- 
marked in an archdeaconate: and though the Right 
Honourable Bailley seemed to have sneaked into the 
Privy Council, I have still to learn what he did when 
he had got there. Such vast means, so long a start, and. 
such a modest standard of achievement, struck in me 
a strong sense of the dulness of that race. 

I found that to come to the hamlet and not visit the 
Hall, would be regarded as a slight. To feed the 
swans, to see the peacocks and the Raphaels—for these 
commonplace people actually possessed two Raphaels 
—to risk life and limb among a famous breed of cattle 
ealled the Carthew Chillinghams, and to do homage to 
the sire (still living) of Donibristle, a renowned winner 
of the Oaks: these, it seemed, were the inevitable sta- 
tions of the pilgrimage. I was not so foolish as to 
resist, for I might have need before I was done of 
general good-will; and two pieces of news fell in which 
changed my resignation to alacrity. It appeared in 
the first place, that Mr. Norris was from home “‘trav- 
elling”; in the second, that a visitor had been before 


314 THE WRECKER 


me and already made the tour of the Carthew curi- 
osities. I thought I knew who this must be; I was 
anxious to learn what he had done and seen; and 
fortune so far favoured me that the under-gardener 
singled out to be my guide had already performed the — 
same function for my predecessor. 

“Yes, sir,” he said, “an American gentleman right 
enough. At least, I don’t think he was quite a gentle- 
man, but a very civil person.” 

The person, it seems, had been civil enough to be 
delighted with the Carthew Chillinghams, to perform 
the whole pilgrimage with rising admiration, and to 
have almost prostrated himself before the shrine of 
Donibristle’s sire. 

“He told me, sir,” continued the gratified under- 
gardener, “that he had often read of ‘the stately ’omes 
of England,’ but ours was the first he had the chance 
to see. When he came to the ’ead of the long alley, 
he fetched his breath. ‘This is indeed a lordly do- 
main!’ he cries. And it was natural he should be 
interested in the place, for it seems Mr. Carthew had 
been kind to him in the States. In fact, he seemed a 
grateful kind of person, and wonderful taken up with 
flowers.” 

I heard this story with amazement. The phrases 
quoted told their own tale; they were plainly from the 
Shyster’s mint. A few hours back I had seen him a 
mere bedlamite and fit for a strait-waistcoat; he was 
penniless in a strange country; it was highly probable 
he had gone without breakfast; the absence of Norris 
_ must have been a crushing blow; the man (by all 
reason) should have been despairing. And now I heard 
of him, clothed and in his right mind, deliberate, in- 
sinuating, admiring vistas, smelling flowers, and talking 
like a book. The strength of character implied amazed 
and daunted me. 

“This is curious,” I said to the under-gardener. “I 
have had the pleasure of some acquaintance with Mr. 
Carthew myself; and I believe none of our western 


eed 


STALLBRIDGE-LE-CARTHEW 315 


friends ever were in England. Who can this person 
be? He couldn’t—no, that’s impossible, he could never 
have had the impudence. His name was not Bellairs?” 

“T didn’t ’ear the name, sir. Do you know anything 
against him?” cried my guide. 

“Well,” said I, “he is certainly not the person Car- 
thew would like to have here in his absence.” 

“Good gracious me!” exclaimed the gardener. ‘He 
was so pleasant spoken, too; I thought he was some 
form of a schoolmaster. Perhaps, sir, you wouldn’t 
mind going right up to Mr. Denman? I recommended 
him to Mr. Denman, when he had done the grounds. 
Mr. Denman is our butler, sir,” he added. 

The proposal was welcome, particularly as affording 
me a graceful retreat from the neighbourhood of the 
Carthew Chillinghams; and, giving up our projected 
circuit, we took a short cut through the shrubbery 
and across the bowling-green to the back quarters of 
the Hall. 

The bowling-green was surrounded by a great hedge 
of yew, and entered by an archway in the quick. As 
we were issuing from this passage, my conductor ar- 
rested me. ) 

“The Honourable Lady Ann Carthew,” he said, in 
an august whisper. And looking over his shoulder, I 
was aware of an old lady with a stick, hobbling some- 
what briskly along the garden path. She must have 
been extremely handsome in her youth; and even the 
limp with which she walked could not deprive her of 
an unusual and almost menacing dignity of bearing. 
Melancholy was impressed besides on every feature, 
and her eyes, as she looked straight before her, seemed 
to contemplate misfortune. 

“She seems sad,” said I, when she had hobbled past 
and we had resumed our walk. 

“She enjoys rather poor spirits, sir,” responded the 
under-gardener. ‘Mr. Carthew—the old gentleman, I 
mean—died less than a year ago; Lord Tillibody, her 
ladyship’s brother, two months after; and then there 


, 


316 THE WRECKER 


was the sad business about the young gentleman. 
Killed in the ’unting-field, sir; and her ladyship’s 
favourite. The present Mr. Norris has never been so 
equally.” 

“So I have understood,” said I, persistently, and (I 
think) gracefully pursuing my inquiries and fortify- 
ing my position as a family friend. “Dear, dear, how 
sad! And has this change—poor Carthew’s return, and 
all—has this not mended matters?” 

“Well, no, sir, not a sign of it,” was the reply. 
“Worse, we think, than ever.” 

“Dear, dear!” said I, again. 

“When Mr. Norris arrived, she did seem glad to see 
him,” he pursued; “and we were all pleased, I’m sure; 
for no one knows the young gentleman but what likes 
him. Ah, sir, it didn’t last long! That very night 
they had a talk, and fell out or something; her lady- 
ship took on most painful; it was like old days, but 
worse. And the next morning Mr. Norris was off again 
upon his travels. ‘Denman,’ he said to Mr. Denman, 
‘Denman, I’ll never come back,’ he said, and shook 
him by the ’and. I wouldn’t be saying all this to a 
stranger, sir,’ added my informant, overcome with a 
sudden fear lest he had gone too far. 

He had indeed told me much, and much that was 
unsuspected by himself. On that stormy night of his 
return, Carthew had told his story; the old lady had 
more upon her mind than mere bereavements; and 
_ among the mental pictures on which she looked, as she 
walked staring down the path, was one of Midway 
Island and the Flying Scud. 

Mr. Denman heard my inquiries with discomposure, 
but informed me the Shyster was already gone. 

“Gone?” cried I. “Then what can he have come 
for? One thing I can tell you; it was not to see the 
house.” — 

“I don’t see it could have been anything else,” re- 
plied the butler. 

“You may depend upon it it was,” said I. “And 


STALLBRIDGE-LE-CARTHEW 317 


_ whatever it was, he has got it. By the way, where 


is Mr. Carthew at present? I was sorry to find he was 
from home,” 
“He is engaged in travelling, sir,” replied the butler, 


dryly. 


“Ah, bravo!” cried I. “I laid a trap for you there, 
Mr. Denman. Now I need not ask you; I am sure 
you did not tell this prying stranger.” 

“To be sure not, sir,’ said the butler. 

I went through ‘the form of “shaking him by the 
‘and”—like Mr. Norris—not, however, with genuine 
enthusiasm. For I had failed ingloriously to get the 
address for myself; and I felt a sure conviction that 
Bellairs had done better, or he had still been here and 
still cultivating Mr. Denman. 

I had escaped the grounds and the cattle; I could not 
escape the house. A lady with silver hair, a slender 
silver voice, and a stream of insignificant information 
not to be diverted, led me through the picture gallery, 
the music-room, the great dining-room, the long draw- 


-ing-room, the Indian room, the theatre, and every 


corner (as I thought) of that interminable mansion. 
There was but one place reserved; the garden-room, 


whither Lady Ann had now retired. I paused a mo- 


ment on the outside of the door, and smiled to myself. 
The situation was indeed strange, and these thin boards 
divided the secret of the Flying Scud. 

All the while, as I went to and fro, I was considering 
the visit and departure of Bellairs. That he had got 
the address, I was quite certain: that he had not got 
it by direct questioning, I was convinced; some in- 
genuity, some lucky incident, had served him. A 
similar chance, an equal ingenuity, was required; or I 
was left helpless, the ferret must run down his prey, 
the great oaks fall, the Raphaels be scattered, the house 


let to some stock- ‘broker suddenly made rich, and the 


name which now filled the mouths of five or six 
parishes dwindle to a memory. Strange that such great 
matters, so old a mansion, a family so ancient and so 


318 THE WRECKER 


dull, should come to depend for perpetuity upon the 
intelligence, the discretion, and the cunning of a Latin- 
Quarter student! What Bellairs had done, I must do 
likewise. Chance or ingenuity, ingenuity or chance— 
so I continued to ring the changes as I walked away 
down the avenue, casting back occasional glances at 
the red brick facade and the twinkling windows of the 
house. How was I to command chance? where was I 
to find the ingenuity? 

These reflections brought me to the door of the inn. 
And here, pursuant to my policy of keeping well with 
all men, I immediately smoothed my brow, and ac- 
cepted (being the only guest in the house) an invita- 
tion to dine with the family in the bar-parlour. I 
sat down accordingly with Mr. Higgs the ex-butler, 
Mrs. Higgs the ex-lady’s maid, and Miss Agnes Higgs, 
their frowsy-headed little girl, the least promising and 
(as the event showed) the most useful of the lot. The 
talk ran endlessly on the great house and the great 
family; the roast beef, the Yorkshire pudding, the 
jam-roll, and the cheddar cheese came and went, and 
still the stream flowed on; near four generations of 
Carthews were touched upon without eliciting one 
point of interest; and we had killed Mr. Henry in “the 
‘unting field,” with a vast elaboration of painful cir- 
cumstance, and buried him in the midst of a whole 
sorrowing county, before I could so much as manage 
to bring upon the stage my intimate friend, Mr. Norris. 
At the name, the ex-butler grew diplomatic, and the 
ex-lady’s-maid tender. He was the only person of the 
whole featureless series who seemed to have accom- 
plished anything worth mention; and his achievements, 
poor dog, seemed to have been confined to going to 
the devil and leaving some regrets. He had been the 
image of the Right Honourable Bailley, one of the 
lights of that dim house, and a career of distinction 
had been predicted of him in consequence almost from 
the cradle. But before he was out of long clothes, the 
cloven foot began to show; he proved to be no Carthew, 


STALLBRIDGE-LE-CARTHEW 319 


developed a taste for low pleasures and bad company, 
went bird’s-nesting with a stable-boy before he was 
eleven, and when he was near twenty, and might have 
been expected to display at least some rudiments of 
the family gravity, rambled the county over with a 
knapsack, making sketches and keeping company in 
wayside inns. He had no pride about him, I was told; 
he would sit down with any man; and it was somewhat 


-woundingly implied that I was indebted to this pe- 


culiarity for my own acquaintance with the hero. Un- 
happily, Mr. Norris was not only eccentric, he was 
fast. His debts were still remembered at the Uni- 
versity; still more, it appeared, the highly humorous 
circumstances attending his expulsion. “He was al- 
ways fond of his jest,” commented Mrs. Higgs. 

““That he were!” observed her lord. 

But it was after he went into the diplomatic service 
that the real trouble began. 

“Tt seems, sir, that he went the pace extraordinary,” 
said the ex-butler, with a solemn gusto. 

‘His debts were somethink awful,” said the lady’s- 
maid. “And as nice a young gentleman all the time 
as you would wish to see!” 

“When word came to Mr. Carthew’s ears, the turn 
up was Vorrible,’ continued Mr. Higgs. “I remember 
it as if it was yesterday. The bell was rung after 
her la’ship was gone, which I answered it myself, sup- 
posing it were the coffee. There was Mr. Carthew on 
his feet. ‘ Iggs,’ he says, pointing with his stick, for 
he had a turn of the gout, ‘order the dog-cart instantly 
for this son of mine which has disgraced hisself.’ Mr. 
Norris say nothink: he sit there with his ’ead down, 
making belief to be looking at a walnut. You might 
have bowled me over with a straw,” said Mr. Higgs. 

“Had he done anything very bad?” I asked. 

“Not he, Mr. Dodsley!” cried the lady—it was so 
she had conceived my name. “He never did anythink 
to call really wrong in his poor life. The ’ole affair 
was a disgrace. It was all rank favouritising.”’ 


320 THE WRECKER 


' eine ‘Iggs! Mrs. 'Iggs!” cried the butler warn- 
ingly. 

“Well, what do I care?” retorted the lady, shaking 
her ringlets. ‘You know it was yourself, Mr. ‘Iggs, 
and so did every member of the staff.” 

While I was getting these facts and opinions, I by 
no means neglected the child. She was not attractive; 
but fortunately she had reached the corrupt age of 
seven, when half a crown appears about as large as a 
saucer and is fully as rare as the dodo. For a shilling 
down, sixpence in her money-box, and an American 
gold dollar which I happened to find in my pocket, I 
bought the creature soul and body. She declared her 
intention to accompany me to the ends of the earth; 
and had to be chidden by her sire for drawing com- 
parisons between myself and her Uncle William, highly 
damaging to the latter. 

Dinner was scarce done, the cloth was not yet re- 
moved, when Miss Agnes must needs climb into my lap 
with her stamp album, a relic of the generosity of 
Uncle Wiliam. There are few things I despise more 
than old stamps, unless perhaps it be crests; for cattle 
(from the Carthew Chillinghams down to the old gate- 
keeper’s milk cow in the lane) contempt is far from . 
being my first sentiment. But it seemed I was doomed 
to pass that day in viewing curiosities, and smother- 
ing a yawn, I devoted myself once more to tread the 
well-known round. I fancy Uncle William must have 
begun the collection himself and tired of it, for the 
book (to my surprise) was quite respectably filled. 
There were the varying shades of the English penny, 
Russians with the coloured heart, old undecipherable 
Thurn-und-Taxis, obsolete triangular Cape of Good 
Hopes, Swan Rivers with the Swan, and Guianas with 
the sailing ship. Upon all these I looked with the eyes 
of a fish and the spirit of a sheep; I think indeed I 
was at times asleep; and it was probably in one of 
these moments that I capsized the album, and there 


STALLBRIDGE-LE-CARTHEW 321 


fell from the end of it, upon the floor, a considerable 
number of what I believe to be called “exchanges.” 

Here, against all probability, my chance had come to 
me; for as I gallantly picked them up, I was struck 
with the disproportionate amount of five-sous French 
stamps. Some one, I reasoned, must write very regu- 
larly from France to the neighbourhood of Stallbridge- 
le-Carthew. Could it be Norris? On one stamp I 
made out an initial C; upon a second I got as far as 
CH; beyond which point, the postmark used was in 
every instance undecipherable. CH, when you con- 
sider that about a quarter of the towns in France 
begin with “chateau,” was an insufficient clue; and I 
promptly annexed the plainest of the collection in 
order to consult the post office. 

The wretched infant took me in the fact. ‘Naughty 
men, to ’teal my ’tamp!” she cried; and when I would 
have brazened it off with a denial, recovered and dis- 
played the stolen article. 

My position was now highly false: and I believe it 
was in mere pity that Mrs. Higgs came to my rescue 
with a welcome proposition. If the gentleman was 
really interested in stamps, she said, probably suppos- 
ing me a Monomaniac on the point, he should see Mr. 
Denman’s album. Mr. Denman had been collecting 
forty years, and his collection was said to be worth a 
mint of money. “Agnes,” she went on, “if you were 
a kind little girl, you would run over to the ’All, tell 
Mr. Denman there’s a connaisseer in the ’ouse, and 
ask him if one of the young gentlemen might bring the 
album down.” 

“T should like to see his exchanges too,” I cried, 
rising to the occasion. “I may have some of mine 
in my pocket-book and we might trade.” 

Half an hour later, Mr. Denman arrived himself 
with a most unconscionable volume under his arm. 
“Ah, sir,” he cried, “when I ’eard you was a collector, 
I dropped all. It’s a saying of mine, Mr. Dodsley, 


322 THE WRECKER 


that collecting stamps makes all collectors kin. It’s 
a bond, sir; it creates a bond.” 

Upon the truth of this, I cannot say; but there is no 
doubt that the attempt to pass yourself off for a col- 
lector falsely creates a precarious situation. 

“Ah, here’s the second issue!” I would say, after 
consulting the legend at the side. “The pink—no, I 
mean the mauve—yes, that’s the beauty of this lot. 
Though of course, as you say,” I would hasten to add, 
“this yellow on the thin paper is more rare.” 

Indeed I must certainly have been detected, had I 
not plied Mr. Denman in self-defence with his favour- 
ite liquor—a port so excellent that it could never 
have ripened in the cellar of the Carthew Arms, but 
must have been transported, under cloud of night, from 
the neighbouring vaults of the great house. At each 
threat of exposure, and in particular whenever I was 
directly challenged for an opinion, I made haste to fill 
the butler’s glass, and by the time we had got to the 
exchanges, he was in a condition in which no stamp 
collector need be seriously feared. God forbid I should 
hint that he was drunk; he seemed incapable of the 
necessary liveliness; but the man’s eyes were set, and 
so long as he was suffered to talk without interruption, 
he seemed careless of my heeding him. 

In Mr. Denman’s exchanges, as in those of little 
Agnes, the same peculiarity was to be remarked, an 
undue preponderance of that despicably common 
stamp, the French twenty-five centimes. And here 
joining them in stealthy review, I found the C and 
the CH; then something of an A just following; and 
then a terminal Y. Here was almost the whole name 
spelled out to me; it seemed familiar, too; and yet for 
some time I could not bridge the imperfection. Then 
I came upon another stamp, in which an L was legible 
before the Y, and in a moment the word leaped up 
complete. Chailly, that was the name; Chailly-en- 
Biére, the post town of Barbizon—ah, there was the 
very place for any man to hide himseli—there was the 


STALLBRIDGE-LE-CARTHEW 323 


very place for Mr. Norris, who had rambled over Eng- 
land making sketches—the very place for Goddedaal, 
who had left a palette-knife on board the Flying Scud. 
Singular, indeed, that while I was drifting over Eng- 
land with the Shyster, the man we were in quest of 
awaited me at my own ultimate destination. 

Whether Mr. Denman had shown his album to 
Bellairs, whether, indeed, Bellairs could have caught 
(as I did) this hint from an obliterated postmark, I 
shall never know, and it mattered not. We were equal 
now; my task at Stallbridge-le-Carthew was accom- 
plished; my interest in postage-stamps died shame- 
lessly away; the astonished Denman was bowed out; 
and ordering the horse to be put in, I plunged into the 
study of the time-table. 


CHAPTER XXI 
FACE TO FACE 


FELL from the skies on Barbizon about two o’clock 

of a September afternoon. It is the dead hour of 
the day; all the workers have gone painting, all the 
idlers strolling, in the forest or the plain; the winding 
causewayed street is solitary, and the inn deserted. 
I was the more pleased to find one of my old com- 
panions in the dining-room; his town clothes marked 
him for a man in the act of departure; and indeed 
his portmanteau lay beside him on the floor. 

“Why, Stennis” I cried, ‘“you’re the last man I 
expected to find here.” 

“You won’t find me here long,” he replied. “King 
Pandion he is dead; all his friends are lapped in lead. 
For men of our antiquity, the poor old shop is played 
out.” 

“T have had playmates, I have had companions,” I 
quoted in return. We were both moved, I think, to 
meet again in this scene of our old pleasure parties so 
unexpectedly, after so long an interval, and both al- 
ready so much altered. 

“That is the sentiment,” he replied. “All, all are 
gone, the old familiar faces. I have been here a week, 
and the only living creature who seemed to recollect 
me was the Pharaon. Bar the Sirons, of course, and 
the perennial Bodmer.” 

“Ts there no survivor?” I inquired. 

“Of our geological epoch? not one,” he replied. 
“This is the city of Petra in Edom.” | 

“And what sort of Bedouins encamp among the 
ruins?” I asked. | 

“Youth, Dodd, youth; blooming, conscious youth,” 
he returned. “Such a gang, such reptiles! to think we 

324 


| 


FACE TO FACE 325 


were like that! I wonder Siron didn’t sweep us from 
his premises.” 

“Perhaps we weren’t so bad,” I suggested. 

“Don’t let me depress you,” said he. “We were both 
Anglo-Saxons, anyway, and the only redeeming feature 
to-day is another.” 

The thought of my quest, a moment driven out by 
this rencounter, revived in my mind. “Who is he?” 
I cried. “Tell me about him.” 

“What, the Redeeming Feature?” said he. ‘Well, 
he’s a very pleasing creature, rather dim, and dull, and 
genteel, but really pleasing. He is very British, 
though, the artless Briton! Perhaps you’ll find him 
too much so for the transatlantic nerves. Come to 
think of it, on the other hand, you ought to get on 
famously. He is an admirer of your great republic 
in one of its (excuse me) shoddiest features; he takes 
in and sedulously reads a lot of American papers. I 
warned you he was artless.” 

“What papers are they?” cried I. 

“San Francisco papers,” said he. “He get’s a bale of 
_ them about twice a week, and studies them like the 
Bible. That’s one of his weaknesses; another is to be 
incaleulably rich. He has taken Masson’s old studio 
—you remember?—at the corner of the road; he has 
furnished it regardless of expense, and lives there sur- 
rounded with vins fins and works of art. When the 
youth of to-day goes up to the Caverne des Brigands 
to make punch—they do all that we did, like some 
nauseous form of ape (I never appreciated before what 
a creature of tradition mankind is)—this Madden 
follows with a basket of champagne. I told them he 
was wrong, and the punch tasted better; but he thought 
the boys liked the style of the thing, and I suppose 
they do. He is a very good-natured soul, and very 
melancholy, and rather a helpless. O, and he has a 
third weakness which I came near forgetting. He 
paints. He has never been taught, but he’s past thirty, 
and he paints.” 


326 THE WRECKER 


“How?” I asked. 

“Rather well, I think,” was the reply. “That’s the 
annoying part of it. See for yourself. That panel is 
his.” 

I stepped towards the window. It was the old fa- 
miliar room, with the tables set like a Greek II, and 
the sideboard, and the aphasic pianc, and the panels on 
the wall. There were Romeo and Juliet, Antwerp from 
the river, Enfield’s ships among the ice, and the huge 
huntsman winding a huge horn; mingled with them 
a few new ones, the thin crop of a succeeding genera- 
tion, not better and not worse. It was to one of these 
I was directed; a thing coarsely and wittily handled, 
mostly with the palette-knife, the colour in some parts 
excellent, the canvas in others loaded with mere clay. 
But it was the scene, and not the art or want of it, 
that riveted my notice. The foreground was of sand 
and scrub and wreckwood; in the middle distance the 
many-hued and smooth expanse of a lagoon, enclosed 
by a wall of breakers; beyond, a blue strip of ocean. 
The sky was cloudless, and I could hear the surf break. 
For the place was Midway Island; the point of view 
the very spot at which I had landed with the captain 
for the first time, and from which I had re-embarked 
the day before we sailed. I had already been gazing 
for some seconds, before my attention was arrested by 
a blur on the sea-line; and stooping to look I recog- 
nised the smoke of a steamer. 

“Yes,” said I, turning towards Stennis, ‘it has merit. 
What is it?” 

“A fancy piece,” he returned. ‘‘That’s what pleased 
me. So few of the fellows in our time had the imagina- 
tion of a garden snail.” 

‘““Madden, you say his name is?” I pursued. 

“Madden,” he repeated. 

“Has he travelled much?” I inquired. 

“T haven’t an idea. He is one of the least auto- 
biographical of men. He sits, and smokes, and giggles, 
and sometimes he makes small jests; but his 

/ 


FACE TO FACE 327 


contributions to the art of pleasing are generally con- 
fined to looking like a gentleman and being one. No,” 
added Stennis, ‘“he’ll never suit you, Dodd; you like 
more head on your liquor. You'll find him as dull as 
ditch water.” 

“Has he big blonde side-whiskers like tusks?” I 
asked, mindful of the photograph of Goddedaal. 

“Certainly not; why should he?” was the reply, 

“Does he write many letters?” I continued. 

“God knows,” says Stennis. “What is wrong with 
you? I never saw you taken this way before.” 

“The fact is, I think I know the man,” said I. “I 
think I’m looking for him. I rather think he is my 
long-lost. brother.” 

“Not twins, anyway,” returned Stennis. 

And about the same time, a carriage driving up to 
the inn, he took his departure. " 

I walked till dinner-time in the plain, keeping to the 
fields; for I instinctively shunned observation, and was 
racked by many incongruous and impatient feelings. 
Here was a man whose voice I had once heard, whose 
doings had filled so many days of my life with interest 
and distress, whom I had lain awake to dream of like 
a lover; and now his hand was on the door; now we 
were to meet; now I was to learn at last the mystery 
of the substituted crew. The sun went down over the 
plain of the Angelus, and as the hour approached, my 
courage lessened. I let the laggard peasants pass me 
on the homeward way. The lamps were lit, the soup 
was served, the company were all at table, and the 
room sounded already with multitudinous talk before 
I entered. I took my place and found I was opposite 
to Madden. Over six feet high and well set up, the 
hair dark and streaked with silver, the eyes dark and 
kindly, the mouth very good-natured, the teeth admir- 
able; linen and hands exquisite; English clothes, an 
English voice, an English bearing: the man stood out 
conspicuous from the company. Yet he had made him- 
self at home, and seemed to enjoy a certain quiet 


328 THE WRECKER 


popularity among the noisy boys of the table d’hote. 
He had an odd, silver giggle of a laugh, that sounded 
nervous when he was really amused, and accorded ill 
with his big stature and manly, melancholy face. ‘This 
laugh fell in continually all through dinner like the 
note of the triangle in a piece of modern French music; 
and he had at times a kind of pleasantry, rather of 
manner than of words, with which he started or main- 
tained the merriment. He took his share in these 
diversions, not so much like a man in high spirits, but 
like one of an approved good-nature, habitually self- 
forgetful, accustomed to please and to follow others. 
I have remarked in old soldiers much the same smiling 
sadness and sociable self-effacement. 

I feared to look at him, lest my glances should 
betray my deep excitement, and chance served me so 
well that the soup was scarce removed before we were 
naturally introduced. My first sip of Chateau Siron, 
a vintage from which I had been long estranged, 
startled me into speech. My, 

“O, this’ll never do!” I cried, in English. 

“Dreadful stuff, isn’t it?” said Madden, in the same 
language. “Do let me ask you to share my bottle. 
They call it Chambertin, which it isn’t; but it’s fairly 
palatable, and there’s nothing in this house that a man 
can drink at all.” 

I accepted; anything would do that paved the way 
to better knowledge. 

“Your name is Madden, I think,” said I. “My old 
friend Stennis told me about you when I came.” 

“Yes: Iam sorry he went; I feel such a Grandfather 
William, alone among all these lads,” he replied. - 

“My name is Dodd,” I resumed. 

“Yes,” said he, “so Madame Siron told me.” 

“Dodd, of San Francisco,’ I continued. “Late of 
Pinkerton and Dodd.” 

“Montana Block? I think,” said he. 

“The same,” said I. 


if 


FACE TO FACE 329 
Neither of us looked at the other; but I could see 


his hand deliberately making bread pills. 


“That’s a nice thing of yours,” I pursued, “that 
panel. The foreground is a little clayey, perhaps, but 
the lagoon is excellent.” 

“You ought to know,” said he. 

“Yes,” returned I, “I’m rather a good judge of—that 
panel,” 

There was a considerable pause. 

“You know a man by the name of Bellairs, don’t 
you?” he resumed. 

“Ah!” eried I, “you have heard from Dr. Urquart?” 

“This very morning,” he replied. 

“Well, there is no hurry about Bellairs,” said I. “It’s 
rather a long story and rather a silly one. But I think 
we have a good deal to tell each other, and perhaps we 
had better wait till we are more alone.” _ 

“T think so,” said he. “Not that any of these fellows 
know English, but we’ll be more comfortable over at 


my place. Your health, Dodd.” 


And we took wine together across the table. 

Thus had this singular introduction passed unper- 
ceived in the midst of more than thirty persons, art- 
students, ladies in dressing-gowns and covered with 
rice powder, six foot of Siron whisking dishes over 
our head, and his noisy sons clattering in and out with 
fresh relays. 

“One question more,” said I. “Did you recognise 
my voice?” 

“Your voice?” he repeated. ‘How should I? I 
had never heard it—we have never met.” 

“And yet, we have been in conversation before now,” 
said I, “and I asked you a question which you never 
answered, and which I have since had many thousand 
better reasons for putting to myself.” 

He turned suddenly white. ‘Good God!” he cried, 


“are you the man in the telephone?” 


I nodded.: 
“Well, well!” said he. “It would take a good deal 


330 THE WRECKER 


of magnanimity to forgive you that. What nights I 
have passed! That little whisper has whistled in my 
ear ever since, like the wind in a keyhole. Who could 
it be? What could it mean? I suppose I have had 
more real, solid misery out of that . . .” He 
paused, and looked troubled. “Though I had more 
to bother me, or ought to have,” he added, and slowly 
emptied his glass. 

“Tt seems we were born to drive each other crazy 
with conundrums,” said I. “I have often thought my 
head would split.” 

Carthew burst into his foolish laugh. “And yet 
neither you nor I had the worst of the puzzle,” he cried. 
“There were others deeper in.” 

“And who were they?” I asked. 

“The underwriters,” said he. 

“Why, to be sure,” cried I. “I never thought of that. 
What could they make of it?” | 

“Nothing,” replied Carthew. “It couldn’t be ex- 
plained. They were a crowd of small dealers at Lloyd’s 
who took it up in syndicate; one of them has a car- 
riage now; and people say he is a deuce of a deep 
fellow, and has the makings of a great financier. 
Another furnished a small villa on the profits. But 
they’re all hopelessly muddled; and when they meet 
each other, they don’t know where to look, like the 
Augurs.” 

Dinner was no sooner at an end, than he carried 


me across the road to Masson’s old studio. It was 


strangely changed. On the walls were tapestry, a few 
good etchings, and some amazing pictures—a Rous- 
seau, a Corot, a really superb old Crome, a Whistler, 
and a piece which my host claimed (and I believe) to 
be a Titian. The room was furnished with comfortable 
English smoking-room chairs, some American rockers, 
and an elaborate business table; spirits and soda-water 
(with the mark of Schweppe, no less) stood ready on 
a butler’s tray, and in one corner, behind a half-drawn 
curtain, I spied a camp-bed and a capacious tub. Such 


4 


FACE TO FACE 331 


& room in Barbizon astonished the beholder, like the 
glories of the cave of Monte Cristo. 

“Now,” said he, “we are quiet. Sit down, if you 
don’t mind, and tell me your story all through.” : 

I did as he asked, beginning with the day when Jim 
showed me the passage in the Daily Occidental, and 
Winding up with the stamp album and the Chailly 
postmark. It was a long business; and Carthew made 
it longer, for he was insatiable of details; and it had 
struck midnight on the old eight-day clock in the 
corner before I had made an end. 

“And now,” said he, “turn about: I must tell you 
my side, much as I hate it. Mine is a beastly story. 
You'll wonder how I can sleep. I’ve told it once before, 
Mr. Dodd.” 

“To Lady Ann?” I asked. 

“As you suppose,” he answered; “and to say the 
truth, I had sworn never to tell it again. Only, you 
seem somehow entitled to the thing; you have paid 
dear enough, God knows; and God knows I hope you 
may like it, now you’ve got it!” 

With that he began his yarn. A new day had 
dawned, the cocks crew in the village and the early 
woodmen were afoot, when he concluded. 


f CHAPTER XXII 
THE REMITTANCE MAN 


INGLETON CARTHEW, the father of Norris, 

was heavily built and feebly vitalised, sensitive 
as a musician, dull as a sheep, and conscientious as a 
dog. He took his position with seriousness, even with 
pomp; the long rooms, the silent servants, seemed in 
his eyes like the observances of some religion of which 
he was the mortal god. He had the stupid man’s in- 
tolerance of stupidity in others; the vain man’s ex- 
quisite alarm lest it should be detected in himself. 
And on both sides Norris irritated and offended him. 
He thought his son a fool, and he suspected that his 
son returned the compliment with interest. The his- 
tory of their relation was simple; they met seldom, 
they quarrelled often. To his mother, a fiery, pungent, 
practical woman, already disappointed in her husband 
and her elder son, Norris was only a fresh disappoint- 
ment. 

Yet the lad’s faults were no great matter; he was 
diffident, placable, passive, unambitious, unenterpris- 
ing; life did not much attract him; he watched it like 
~a curious and dull exhibition, not much amused, and 
not tempted in the least to take a part. He beheld 
_ his father ponderously grinding sand, his mother fierily 
breaking butterflies, his brother labouring at the 
pleasures of the Hawbuck with the ardour of a soldier 
in a doubtful battle; and the vital sceptic looked on 
wondering. They were careful and troubled about 


. many things; for him there seemed not even one thing 


needful. He was born disenchanted, the world’s prom- 
ises awoke no echo in his bosom, the world’s activities 


oo 


= 
: THE REMITTANCE MAN 333 


and the world’s distinctions seemed to him equally 
without a base in fact. He liked the open air; he liked 
comradeship, it mattered not with whom, his comrades 
were only a remedy for solitude. And he had a taste 
for painted art. An array of fine pictures looked upon 
his childhood and from these roods of jewelled canvas 
he received an indelible impression. The gallery at 
Stallbridge betokened generations of picture lovers; 
Norris was perhaps the first of his race to hold the 
pencil. The taste was genuine, it grew and strength- 
ened with his growth; and yet he suffered it to be 
suppressed with scarce a struggle. Time came for him 
to go to Oxford, and he resisted faintly. He was 
stupid, he said; it was no good to put him through the 
mill; he wished to be a painter. The words fell on 
his father like a thunder-bolt, and Norris made haste 
to give way. “It didn’t really matter, don’t you 
know?” said he. ‘And it seemed an awful shame to 
vex the old boy.” 

To Oxford he went obediently, hopelessly; and at 
Oxford became the hero of a certain circle. He was 
active and adroit; when he was in the humour, he 
excelled in many sports; and his singular melancholy 
detachment gave him a place apart. He set a fashion 
in his clique; envious undergraduates sought to parody 
his unaffected lack of zeal and fear; it was a kind of 
new Byronism more composed and dignified. ‘Nothing 
really mattered”; among other things, this formula em- 

braced the dons; and though he always meant to be 
civil, the effect on the college authorities was one of 
startling rudeness. His indifference cut like insolence; 
and in some outbreak of his constitutional levity (the 
complement of his melancholy) he was “sent down” in 
the middle of the second year. 

The event was new in the annals of the Carthews, 
and Singleton was prepared to make the most of it. It 
had been long his practice to prophesy for his second 
son a career of ruin and disgrace. There is an advan- 
tage in this artless parental habit. Doubtless the 


334 THE WRECKER 


father is interested in his son; but doubtless also the 
prophet grows to be interested in his prophecies. If 
the one goes wrong, the others come true. Old Carthew 
drew from this source esoteric consolations; he dwelt at 
length on his own foresight; he produced variations 
hitherto unheard from the old theme “I told you so,” 
coupled his son’s name with the gallows and the hulks, 
and spoke of his small handful of college debts as 
though he must raise money on a mortgage to discharge 
them. 

“IT don’t think that is fair, sir,” said Norris. “I lived 
at college exactly as you told me. I am sorry I was 
sent down, and you have a perfect right to blame me 
for that; but you have no right to pitch into me about 
these debts.” 

The effect upon a stupid man not unjustly incensed 
need scarcely be described. For a while Singleton 
raved. 

“T’ll tell you what, father,” said Norris at last, “I 
don’t think this is going to do. I think you had better 
let me take to painting. It’s the only thing I take a 
spark of interest in. I shall never be steady as long 
as I’m at anything else.” 

“When you stand here, sir, to the neck in disgrace,” 
said the father, “I would have hoped you would have 
had more good taste than to repeat this levity.” 

The hint was taken; the levity was nevermore ob- 
truded on the father’s notice, and Norris was inexor- 
ably launched upon a backward voyage. He went 
abroad to study foreign languages, which he learned, 
at a very expensive rate; and a fresh crop of debts 
fell soon to be paid, with similar lamentations, which 
were in this case perfectly justified, and to which 
Norris paid no regard. He had been unfairly treated 
over the Oxford affair; and with a spice of malice very 
surprising in one so placable, and an obstinacy remark- 
able in one so weak, refused from that day forward to 
exercise the least captaincy on his expenses. He 
wasted what he would; he allowed his servants to 


— 


THE REMITTANCE MAN 339 


despoil him at their pleasure; he sowed insolvency; and 
when the crop was ripe, notified his father with exas- 
perating calm. His own capital was put in his hands, 
he was planted in the diplomatic service and told he 
must depend upon himself. 

He did so till he was twenty-five; by which time he 
had spent his money, laid in a handsome choice of 
debts, and acquired (like so many other melancholic 
and uninterested persons) a habit of gambling. An 
Austrian colonel—the same who afterwards hanged 
himself at Monte Carlo—gave him a lesson which 


_ lasted two-and-twenty hours, and left him wrecked and 


helpless. Old Singleton once more repurchased the 
honour of his name, this time at a fancy figure; and 
Norris was set afloat again on stern conditions. An 
allowance of three hundred pounds in the year was 
to be paid to him quarterly by a lawyer in Sydney, 
New South Wales. He was not to write. Should he 
fail on any quarter-day to be in Sydney, he was to, 
be held for dead and the allowance tacitly withdrawn. 
Should he return to Europe, an advertisement publicly 


_ disowning him was to appear in every paper of repute. 


It was one of his most annoying features as a son, 


_ that he was always polite, always just, and in what- 


ever whirlwind of domestic anger, always calm. He 
expected trouble; when trouble came, he was unmoved: 
he might have said with Singleton “I told you so’; he 
was content with thinking “just as I expected.” On 
the fall of these last thunderbolts, he bore himself 
hike a person only distantly interested in the event; 
pocketed the money and the reproaches, obeyed orders 
punctually; took ship and came to Sydney. Some men 
are still lads at twenty-five; and so it was with Norris. 
Eighteen days after he landed, his quarter’s allowance 
was all gone; and with the light-hearted hopefulness 
of strangers in what is called a new country, he began 
to besiege offices and apply for all manner of incon- 
gruous situations. Everywhere and last of all from 
his lodgings, he was bowed out; and found himself 


336 THE WRECKER 


reduced, in a very elegant suit of summed tweeds, to 
herd and camp with the degraded outcasts of the city. 

In this strait, he had recourse to the lawyer who 
paid him his allowance. 

“Try to remember that my time is valuable, Mr. 
Carthew,” said the lawyer. “It is quite unnecessary 
you should enlarge on the peculiar position in which 
you stand. Remittance men, as we call them here, are 
not so rare in my experience; and in such cases I act 
upon a system. I make you a present of a sovereign; 
here it is. Every day you choose to call, my clerk 
will advance you a shilling; on Saturday, since my 
office is closed on Sunday, he will advance you half a 
crown. My conditions are these: that you do not 
come to me, but to my clerk; that you do not come 
here the worse of liquor; and you go away the mo- 
ment you are paid and have signed a receipt. I wish 
you a good-morning.” 

__“T have to thank you, I suppose,” said Carthew. 
“My position is so wretched that I cannot even refuse 
this starvation allowance.” 

“Starvation!” said the lawyer, smiling. “No man 
will starve here on a shilling a day. I have had on my 
hands another young gentleman, who remained con- 
tinuously intoxicated for six years on the same allow- 
ance.” And he once more busied himself with his 
papers. | 

In the time that followed, the image of the smiling 
lawyer haunted Carthew’s memory. “That three min- 
utes’ talk was all the education I ever had worth talk- 
ing of,” says he. “It was all life in a nut-shell. 
Confound it! I thought, have I got to the point of 
envying that ancient fossil?” 

Every morning for the next two or three weeks, the 
stroke of ten found Norris, unkempt and haggard, at 
‘the lawyer’s door. The long day and longer night he 
spent in the Domain, now on a bench, now on the grass 
under a Norfolk Island pine, the companion of perhaps 
the lowest class on earth, the Larrikins of Sydney. 


ae 


THE REMITTANCE MAN 337 


Morning after morning, the dawn behind the lighthouse 
recalled him from slumber; and he would stand and 
gaze upon the changing east, the fading lenses, the 
smokeless city, and the many-armed and many-masted 
harbour growing slowly clear under his eyes. His 
bed-fellows (so to call them) were less active; they 
lay sprawled upon the grass and benches, the dingy 
men, the frowsy women, prolonged their late repose; 
and Carthew wandered among the sleeping bodies 
alone, and cursed the incurable stupidity of his be- 
haviour. Day brought a new society of nurserymaids 
and children, and fresh-dressed and (I am sorry to 
say) tight-laced maidens, and gay people in rich traps; 
upon the skirts of which Carthew and “the other black- 
guards”—his own bitter phrase—skulked, and chewed 
grass, and looked on. Day passed, the light died, the 
green and leafy precinct sparkled with lamps or lay 
in shadow, and the round of the night began again, 
the loitering women, the lurking men, the sudden out- 
burst of screams, the sound of flying feet. “You 
mayn’t believe it,” says Carthew, “but I got to that 
pitch that I didn’t care a hang. I have been wakened 
out of my sleep to hear a woman screaming, and I have 
only turned upon my other side. Yes, it’s a queer 
place, where the dowagers and the kids walk all day, 
and at night you can hear people bawling for help as 
if it was the Forest of Bondy, with the lights of a 
great town all round, and parties spinning through in 
cabs from Government House and dinner with my 
lord!” 

It was Norris’s diversion, having none other, to 
scrape acquaintance, where, how, and with whom he 
could. Many a long dull talk he held upon the benches 
or the grass; many a strange waif he came to know; 
many strange things he heard, and saw some that were 
abominable. It was to one of these last that he owed 
his deliverance from the Domain. For some time the 
rain had been merciless; one night after another he had 
been obliged to squander fourpence on a bed and 


338 THE WRECKER 


reduce his board to the remaining eightpence: and he 
sat one morning near the Macquarrie Street entrance, 
hungry, for he had gone without breakfast, and wet, as 
he had already been for several days, when the cries 
of an animal in distress attracted his attention. Some 
fifty yards away, in the extreme angle of the grass, a 
party of the chronically unemployed had got hold of a 
dog, whom they were torturing in a manner not to be 
described. The heart of Norris, which had grown in- 
different to the cries of human anger or distress, woke 
at the appeal of the dumb creature. He ran amongst 
the Larrikins, scattered them, rescued the dog, and 
stood at bay. They were six in number, shambling 
gallows-birds; but for once the proverb was right, 
cruelty was coupled with cowardice, and the wretches 
cursed him and made off. It chanced this act of 
prowess had not passed unwitnessed. On a bench 
near by there was seated a shopkeeper’s assistant out 
of employ, a diminutive, cheerful, red-headed creature 
by the name of Hemstead. He was the last man to _ 
have interfered himself, for his discretion more than 
equalled his valour; but he made haste to congratulate 
Carthew, and to warn him he might not always be so 
fortunate. 

“They’re a dyngerous lot of people about this park. 
My word! it doesn’t do to ply with them!” he ob- 
served, in that rycy Austrylian English, which (as it 
has received the imprimatur of Mr. Froude) we should 
all make haste to imitate. 

“Why, I’m one of that lot myself,” returned Carthew. 

Hemstead laughed and remarked that he knew a 
gentleman when he saw one. ) 

“For all that, I am simply one of the unemployed,’ 
said Carthew, seating himself beside his new acquaint- 
ance, as he had sat (since this experience began) be- 
side so many dozen others. 

“T am out of a plyce myself,” said Hemstead. 

“You beat me all the way and back,” says Carthew. 
“My trouble is that I have never been in one.” 


THE REMITTANCE MAN 339 


“T suppose you’ve no tryde?” asked Hemstead. 

“I know how to spend money,” replied Carthew, 
“and I really do know something of horses and some- 
thing of the sea. But the unions head me off; if it 
weren’t for them, I might have had a dozen berths.” 

“My word!” cried the sympathetic listener. “Ever 
try the mounted police?” he inquired. 

“T did, and was bowled out,” was the reply; ‘“couldn’t 
pass the doctors.” 

“Well, what do you think of the ryleways, then?” 
asked Hemstead. 

“What do you think of them, if you come to that?” 
asked Carthew. 

“O, I don’t think of them; I don’t go in for manual 
labour,” said the little man, proudly. “But if a man 
don’t mind that, he’s pretty sure of a job there.” 

“By George, you tell me where to got” cried Car- 
thew, rising. 

The heavy rains continued, the country was already 
overrun with floods; the railway system daily required 
more hands, daily the superintendent advertised; but 
“the unemployed” preferred the resources of charity 
and rapine, and a navvy, even an amateur navvy, com- 
manded money in the market. The same night, after 
a tedious journey, and a change of trains to pass a 
landslip, Norris found himself in a muddy cutting be- 
hind South Clifton, attacking his first shift of manual 
labour. 

For weeks the rain scarce relented. The whole front 
of the mountain slipped seaward from above, ava- 
lanches of clay, rock, and uprooted forest spewed over 
the cliffs and fell upon the beach or in the breakers. 
Houses were carried bodily away and smashed like 
nuts; others were menaced and deserted, the door 
locked, the chimney cold, the dwellers fled elsewhere for 
safety. Night and day the fire blazed in the encamp- 
ment; night and day hot coffee was served to the over- 
driven toilers in the shift; night and day the engineer 
of the section made his rounds with words of 


340 THE WRECKER 


encouragement, hearty and rough and well suited to his 
men. Night and day, too, the telegraph clicked with 
disastrous news and anxious inquiry. Along the ter- 
raced line of rail, rare trains came creeping and signal- 
ling; and paused at the threatened corner, like living 
things conscious of peril. The commandant of the post 
would hastily review his labours, make (with a dry 
throat) the signal to advance; and the whole squad 
line the way and look on in a choking silence, or burst 
into a brief cheer as the train cleared the point of 
danger and shot on, perhaps through the thin sunshine 
between squalls, perhaps with blinking lamps into the 
gathering, rainy twilight. 

One such scene Carthew will remember till he dies. 
It blew great guns from the seaward; a huge surf bom- 
barded, five hundred feet below him, the steep moun- 
tain’s foot; close in was a vessel in distress, firing shots 
from a fowling-piece, if any help might come. So he 
saw and heard her the moment before the train ap- 
peared and paused, throwing up a Babylonian tower 
of smoke into the rain and oppressing men’s hearts 
with the scream of her whistle. The engineer was 
there himself; he paled as he made the signal: the 
engine came at a foot’s pace; but the whole bulk of 
mountain shook and seemed to nod seaward, and the 
watching navvies instinctively clutched at shrubs and 
trees; vain precautions, vain as the shots from the poor 
sailors. Once again fear was disappointed; the train 
passed unscathed; and Norris, drawing a long breath, 
_remembered the labouring ship and glanced below. She 
was gone. 

So the days and the nights passed: Homeric labour 
in Homeric circumstance. Carthew was sick with 
_ sleeplessness and coffee; his hands, softened by the wet, 
were cut to ribbons; yet he enjoyed a peace of mind 


and health of body hitherto unknown. Plenty of open 


air, plenty of physical exertion, a continual instancy of 
toil, here was what had been hitherto lacking in that 
misdirected life, and the true cure of vital scepticism. 


THE REMITTANCE MAN 341 


To get the train through: there was the recurrent prob- 
lem; no time remained to ask if it were necessary. 
Carthew; the idler, the spendthrift, the drifting dilet- 
tant, was soon remarked, praised, and advanced. The 
engineer swore by him and pointed him out for an 
example. “I’ve a new chum, up here,” Norris heard 
him saying, “a young swell. He’s worth any two in 
the squad.” The words fell on the ears of the dis- 
carded son like music; and from that moment, he not 
only found an interest, he took a pride in his plebeian 
tasks. 

The press of work was still at its highest when 
quarter-day approached. Norris was now raised to 
a position of some trust; at his discretion, trains were 
stopped or forwarded at the dangerous cornice near 
North Clifton; and he found in his responsibility both 
terror and delight. The thought of the seventy-five 
pounds that would soon await him at the lawyer’s, and 
of his own obligation to be present every quarter-day 
in Sydney, filled him for a little with divided counsels. 
Then he made up his mind; walked in a slack moment 
to the inn at Clifton, ordered a sheet of paper and a 
bottle of beer, and wrote, explaining that he held a 
good appointment which he would lose if he came to 
Sydney, and asking the lawyer to accept this letter 
as an evidence of his presence in the colony and retain 
the money till next quarter-day. The answer came in 
course of post, and was not merely favourable but cor- 
dial. “Although what you propose is contrary to the 
terms of my instructions,” it ran, “I willingly accept 
the responsibility of granting your request. I should 
say I am agreeably disappointed in your behaviour. 
My experience has not led me to found much expecta- 
tions on gentlemen in your position.” 

The rains abated, and the temporary labour was dis- 
charged; not Norris, to whom the engineer clung as to 
found money; not Norris, who found himself a ganger 
on the line in the regular staff of navvies. His camp 
was pitched in a grey wilderness of rock and forest, 


342 THE WRECKER 


far from any house; as he sat with his mates about 
the evening fire, the trains passing on the track were 
their next and indeed their only neighbours, except the 
wild things of the wood. Lovely weather, light and 
monotonous employment, long hours of somnolent 
camp-fire talk, long sleepless nights, when he reviewed 
his foolish and fruitless career as he rose and walked 
in the moonlit forest, an occasional paper of which he 
would read all, the advertisements with as much relish 
as the text: such was the tenor of an existence which 
soon began to weary and harass him. He lacked and 
regretted the fatigue, the furious hurry, the suspense, 
the fires, the midnight coffee, the rude and mud- 
bespattered poetry of the first toilful weeks. In the 
quietness of his surroundings, a voice summoned him 
from this exorbital part of life, and about the middle 
of October he threw up the situation and bade farewell 
to the camp of tents and the shoulder of Bald Moun- 
tain. 

Clad in his rough clothes, with a bundle on his 
shoulder and his accumulated wages in his pocket, he 
entered Sydney for the second time, and walked with 
pleasure and some bewilderment in the cheerful streets, 
like a man landed from a voyage. The sight of the 
people led. him on. He forgot his necessary errands, he 
forgot to eat. He wandered in moving multitudes like 
a stick upon a river. Last-he came to the Domain and 
strolled there, and remembered his shame and suffer- 
ings, and looked with poignant curiosity’ at his suc- 
cessors. Hemstead, not much shabbier and no less 
cheerful than before, he recognised and addressed like 
an old family friend. | 

“That was a good turn you did me,” said he. “That 
railway was the making of me. I hope you’ve had luck 
yourself.” 

“My word, no!” replied the little man. “I just sit 
here and read the Dead Bird. It’s the depression in 
tryde, you see. There’s no positions goin’ that a man 
like me would care to look at.” And he showed Norris 


THE REMITTANCE MAN 343 


his certificates and written characters, one from a 
grocer in Wooloomooloo, one from an ironmonger, and 
a third from a billiard saloon. “Yes,” he said, ‘I tried 
bein’ a billiard marker. It’s no account; these lyte 
hours are no use for a man’s health. I won’t be no 
man’s slyve,” he added firmly. 

On the principle that he who is too proud to be a 
slave is usually not too modest to become a pensioner, 
Carthew gave him half a sovereign, and departed, 
being suddenly struck with hunger, in the direction of 
the Paris House. When he came to that quarter of the 
city, the barristers were trotting in the streets in wig 
and gown, and he stood to observe them with his 
bundle on his shoulder, and his mind full of curious 
recollections of the past. 

“By George!” cried a voice, “it’s Mr. Carthew!” 

And turning about, he found himself- face to face 
with a handsome sunburnt youth, somewhat fatted, 
arrayed in the finest of fine raiment, and sporting about 
a sovereign’s worth of flowers in his _ buttonhole. 
Norris had met him during his first days in Sydney at 
a farewell supper; had even escorted him on board a 
schooner full of cockroaches and black-boy sailors in 
which he was bound for six months among the islands, 
and had kept him ever since in entertained remem- 
brance. Tom Hadden (known to the bulk of Sydney 
folk as Tommy) was heir to a considerable property, 
which a prophetic father had placed in the hands of 
rigorous trustees. The income supported Mr. Hadden 
in splendour for about three months out of twelve; 
the rest of the year he passed in retreat among the 
islands. He was now about a week returned from his 
eclipse, pervading Sydney in hansom cabs and airing 
the first bloom of six new suits of clothes; and yet the 
unaffected creature hailed Carthew in his working 
- jeans and with the damning bundle on his shoulder, 
as he might have claimed acquaintance with a duke. 

“Come and have a drink!” was his cheerful cry. 

“I’m just going to have lunch at the Paris House,” 


344 THE WRECKER 


returned Carthew. “It’s a long time since I have had | 


a decent meal.” 
“Splendid scheme!” said Hadden. “I’ve only had 


breakfast half an hour ago; but we’ll have a private . 
room, and I’ll manage to pick something. It’ll brace 


me up. I was on an awful tear last night, and I’ve 
met no end of fellows this morning.” To meet a fellow, 
and to stand and share a drink, were with Tom synon- 
ymous terms. 

They were soon at table in the corner room upstairs, 
and paying due attention to the best fare in Sydney. 
The odd similarity of their positions drew them to- 
gether, and they began soon to exchange confidences. 
Carthew related his privations in the Domain and his 
toils as a navvy; Hadden gave his experience as an 
amateur copra merchant in the South Seas, and drew 
a humorous picture of life in a coral island. Of the 
two plans of retirement, Carthew gathered that his own 
had been vastly the more lucrative; but Hadden’s 
trading outfit had consisted largely of bottled stout and 
brown sherry for his own consumption. 

“I had champagne too,” said Hadden, “but I kept 
that in case of sickness, until I didn’t seem to be going 
to be sick, and then I opened a pint every Sunday. 
Used to sleep all morning, then breakfast with my 
pint of fizz, and lie in a hammock and read Hallam’s 
Middle Ages. Have you read that? I always take 
something solid to the islands. There’s no doubt I 
did the thing in rather a fine style; but if it was gone 
about a little cheaper, or there were two of us to 
bear the expense, it ought to pay hand over fist. I’ve 
got the influence, you see. I’m a chief now, and sit in 
the speak-house under my own strip of roof. I’d like 
to see them taboo me! They daren’t try it; I’ve a 
strong party, I can tell you. Why, I’ve had upwards 
of thirty cowtops sitting in my front verandah eating 
tins of salmon.” 

“Cowtops?” asked Carthew, “what are they?” 

“That’s what Hallam would call feudal retainers,” 


THE REMITTANCE MAN 345 


explained Hadden, not without vainglory. “They’re 
My Followers. They belong to My Family. I tell 
you, they come expensive, though; you can’t fill up all 
these retainers on tinned salmon for nothing; but when- 
ever I could get it, I would give ’em squid. Squid’s 
good for natives, but I don’t care for it, do you?—or 
shark either. It’s like the working classes at home. 
With copra at the price it is, they ought to be willing 
to bear their share of the loss; and so I’ve told them 
again and again. I think it’s a man’s duty to open 
their minds, and I try to, but you can’t get political 
economy into them; it doesn’t seem to reach their 
intelligence.” 

. There was an expression still sticking in Carthew’s 
memory, and he returned upon it with a smile. “Talk- 
ing of political economy,” said he, “you said if there 
were two of us to bear the expense, the profits would 
increase. How do you make out that?” 

“T’ll show you! Jl figure it out for you!” cried 
Hadden, and with a pencil on the back of the bill of 
fare, proceeded to perform miracles. He was a man, 
or let us say rather a lad, of unusual projective power. 
Give him the faintest hint of any speculation, and the 
figures flowed from him by the page. A lively imag- 
ination and a ready though inaccurate memory sup- 
plied his data; he delivered himself with an inimitable 
heat that made him seem the picture of pugnacity; 
lavished contradiction; had a form of words, with or 
without significance, for every form of criticism; and 
the looker-on alternately smiled at his simplicity and 
fervour, or was amazed by his unexpected shrewdness. 
He was a kind of Pinkerton in play. I have called 
Jim’s the romance of business; this was its Arabian 
tale. 7 

“Have you any idea what this would cost?” he asked, 
- pausing at an item. | 

“Not I,” said Carthew. 

“Ten pounds ought to be ample,” concluded the 
projector. 


346 THE WRECKER 


“O, nonsense!” cried Carthew. “Fifty at the very 
least.” 

“You told me yourself this moment you knew 
nothing about it!” cried Tommy. “How can I make a 
calculation, if you blow hot and cold? You don’t seem 
able to be serious!” 

But he consented to raise his estimate to twenty; and 
a little after, the calculation coming out with a deficit, 
cut it down again to five pound ten, with the remark, 
“I told you it was nonsense. This sort of thing has 
to be done strictly, or where’s the use?” 

Some of these processes struck Carthew as unsound; 
and he was at times altogether thrown out by the 
capricious startings of the prophet’s mind. These 
plunges seemed to be gone into for exercise and by the 
way, like the curvets of a willing horse. Gradually 
the thing took shape; the glittering if baseless edifice 
arose and the hare still ran on the mountains, but 
the soup was already served in silver plate. Carthew 
in a few days could command a hundred and fifty 
pounds; Hadden was ready with five hundred; why 
should they not recruit a fellow or two more, charter 
an old ship, and go cruising on their. own account? 
Carthew was an experienced yachtsman; Hadden pro- 
fessed himself able to “work an approximate sight.” 
Money was undoubtedly to be made, or why should 
so many vessels cruise about the islands? they who 
worked their own ship were sure of a still higher profit. 

“And, whatever else comes of it, you see,” cried 
Hadden, ‘we get our keep for nothing. Come, buy 
‘some togs, that’s the first thing you have to do of 
course; and then we’ll take a hansom and go to the 
Currency Lass.” 

“I’m going to stick to the togs I have,” said Norris. 

“Are you?” cried Hadden. “Well, I must say I 
admire you. You're a regular sage. It’s what you call 
Pythagoreanism, isn’t it? if I haven’t forgotten my 
philosophy.” 

“Well, I call it economy,” returned Carthew. “If we 


THE REMITTANCE MAN 347 


are going to try this thing on, I shall want every six- 
pence.’ 

“You'll see if we’re going to try it!” cried Tommy, 
rising radiant from table. “Only, mark you, Carthew, 
it must be all in your name. I have capital, you see; 
but you're all right. You can play vacuus viator, if the 
thing goes wrong.” 

“I thought we had just proved it was quite safe,” 
said Carthew. 

“There’s nothing safe in business, my boy,’ 
the sage; “not even bookmaking.” 

The public-house and tea-garden called the Currency 
Lass represented a moderate fortune gained by its 
proprietor, Captain Bostock, during a long, active, 
and occasionally historic career among the islands. 
Anywhere from Tonga to the Admiralty Isles, he knew 
the ropes and could lie in. the native dialect. He had 
seen the end of sandal-wood, the end of oil, and the 
beginning of copra; and he was himself a commercial 
pioneer, the first that ever carried human teeth into 
the Gilberts. He was tried for his life in Fiji in Sir 
Arthur Gordon’s time; and if ever he prayed at all, the 
name of Sir Arthur was certainly not forgotten. He 
was speared in seven places in New Ireland—the same 
time his mate was killed—the famous “outrage of the 
brig, Jolly Roger’; but the treacherous savages made 
little by their wickedness, and Bostock, in spite of 
their teeth, got seventy-five head of volunteer labour 
on board, of whom not more than a dozen died of 
injuries. He had a hand, besides, in the amiable 
pleasantry which cost the life of Patteson; and when 
the sham bishop landed, prayed, and gave his benedic- 
tion to the natives, Bostock, arrayed in a female 
chemise out of the trade-room, had stood at his right 
hand and boomed amens. This, when he was sure he 
was among good fellows, was his favourite yarn. 
“Two hundred head of labour for a hatful of amens,” 
he used to name the tale; and its sequel, the death of 


’ replied 


348 THE WRECKER | 


= 
4 


the real bishop, struck him as a circumstance of ex- — 


traordinary humour. 


Many of these details were communicated in the © 


hansom, to the surprise of Carthew. 

“Why do we want to visit this old ruffan?” he asked. 

“You wait till you hear him,” replied Tommy. 
“That man knows everything.” 

On descending from the hansom at the Currency 
Lass, Hadden was struck with the appearance of the 
cabman, a gross, salt-looking man, red-faced, blue- 
yee short-handed and short-winded, perhaps nearing 

orty. 

“Surely I know you?” said he. “Have you driven 
me before?” 

“Many’s the time, Mr. Hadden,” returned the driver. 
“The last time you was back from the islands, it was 
me that drove you to the races, sir.” 

“All right: jump down and have a drink then,” said 
Tom, and he turned and led the way into the garden. 

Captain Bostock met the party: he was a slow, sour 
old man, with fishy eyes, greeted Tommy offhand, and 
(as was afterwards remembered) exchanged winks ‘with 
the driver. 

“A bottle of beer for the cabman there at that table,” 
said Tom. ‘Whatever you please from shandygaff to 
champagne at this one here; and you sit down with us. 
Let me make you acquainted with my friend, Mr. Car- 
thew. I’ve come on business, Billy; I want to consult 
you as a friend; I’m going into the island trade upon 
- my own account.” 

Doubtless the captain was a mine of counsel, but 
opportunity was denied him. He could not venture on 
a statement, he was scarce allowed to finish a phrase, 


y 


before Hadden swept him from the field with a volley — 
of protest and correction. That projector, his face © 


blazing with inspiration, first laid before him at inordi- 


nate length a question, and as soon as he attempted — 


to reply, leaped at his throat, called his facts in 


. 
: 
: 


THE REMITTANCE MAN 349 


question, derided his policy, and at times thundered on 
him from the heights of moral indignation. 

“I beg your pardon,” he said once. “I am a gentle- 
man, Mr. Carthew here is a gentleman, and we don’t 
mean to do that class of business. Can’t you see who 
you're talking to? Can’t you talk sense? Can’t you 
give us ‘a dead bird’ for a good trade-room?” 

_“No, I don’t suppose I can,” returned old Bostock: 
“not when I can’t hear my own voice for two seconds 
together. It was gin and guns I did it with.” 

“Take your gin and guns to Putney!” cried Hadden. 
“It was the thing in your times, that’s right enough; 
but you’re old now, and the game’s up. I'll tell you 
what’s wanted now-a-days, Bill Bostock,” said he; and 
did, and took ten minutes to it. 

Carthew could not refrain from smiling. He began 
to think less seriously of the scheme, Hadden appear- 
ing too irresponsible a guide; but, on the other hand, 
he enjoyed himself amazingly. It was far from being 
the same with Captain Bostock. | 

“You know a sight, don’t you?” remarked that 
gentleman, bitterly, when Tommy paused. 

“T know a sight more than you, if that’s what you 
mean,’ retorted Tom. “It stands to reason I do. 
You're not a man of any education; you’ve been all 
your life at sea or in the islands; you don’t suppose 
you can give points to a man like me?” 

“Here’s your health, Tommy,” returned Bostock. 
“You'll make an Ar bake in the New Hebrides.” 

“That’s what I call talking,” cried Tom, not perhaps 
grasping the spirit of this doubtful compliment. “Now 
you give me your attention. We have the money and 
the enterprise, and I have the experience: what we 
want is a cheap, smart boat, a good captain, and an 
introduction to some house that will give us credit for 
the trade.” 

“Well, I'll tell you,” said Captain Bostock, “I seen 
men like you baked and eaten, and complained. of 


q 


350 THE WRECKER 4 


afterwards. Some was tough, and some hadn’t no 
flavour,” he added grimly. 

“What do you mean by that?” cried Tom. 

“T mean I don’t care,” said Bostock. “It ain’t any of 
my interests. I haven’t underwrote your life. Only 
I’m blest if I’m not sorry for the cannibal as tries to 
eat your head. And what I recommend is a cheap, 
smart coffin and a good undertaker. See if you can 
find a house to give you credit for a coffin! Look at 
your friend there; he’s got some sense; he’s laughing 
at you so as he can’t stand.” 

The exact degree of ill-feeling in Mr. Bostock’s 
mind was difficult to gauge; perhaps there was not 
much, perhaps he regarded his remarks as a form of 
courtly badinage. But there is little doubt that Had- 
den resented them. He had even risen from his place, 
and the conference was on the point of breaking up, 
when a new voice joined suddenly in the conversation. 

The cabman sat with his back turned upon the 
party, smoking a meerschaum pipe. Not a word of 
Tommy’s eloquence had missed him, and he now faced 
suddenly about with these amazing words:— 

“Excuse me, gentlemen; if you’ll buy me the ship I 
want, I’ll get you the trade on credit.” 

There was a pause. 

“Well, what do you mean?” gasped Tommy. 

“Better tell ’em who I am, Billy,” said the cabman. 

“Think it safe, Joe?” inquired Mr. Bostock. 

“Tl take my risk of it,’ returned the cabman. 

_ “Gentlemen,” said Bostock, rising solemnly, “let me 
make you acquainted with Captain Wicks of the Grace 
Darling.” 

“Yes, gentlemen, that is what I am,” said the cab- 
man. “You know I’ve been in trouble; and I don’t 
deny but what I struck the blow, and where was I to 
get evidence of my provocation? So I turned to and 
took a cab, and I’ve driven one for three Sips? now 
and nobody the wiser.’ 

‘I beg your pardon,” said Carthew, joining almost 


ee a 


THE REMITTANCE MAN 351 


for the first time; “I am a new chum. What was the 
charge?”’ 

“Murder,” said Captain Wicks, “and I don’t deny 
but what I struck the blow. And there’s no sense in 
my trying to deny I was afraid it was flat mutiny. Ask 
Billy here. He knows how it was.” 

Carthew breathed long; he had a strange, half- 
pleasurable sense of wading deeper in the tide of life. 
“Well?” said he, “you were going on to say?” 

“I was going on to say this,’ said the captain, 
sturdily. “I’ve overheard what Mr. Hadden has been 
saying, and I think he talks good sense. I like some of 
his ideas first chop. He’s sound on trade-rooms; he’s 
all there on the trade-room; and I see that he and I 
would pull together. Then you’re both gentlemen, and 
I like that,” observed Captain Wicks. ‘And then I'll 
tell you I’m tired of this cabbing cruise, and I want to 
get to work again. Now here’s my offer. I’ve a little 
money I can stake up,—all of a hundred anyway. 
Then my old firm will give me trade, and jump at the 
chance; they never lost by me; they know what I’m 
worth as supercargo. And last of all, you want a good 
captain to sail your ship for you. Well, here 1 am. 
I’ve sailed schooners for ten years. Ask Billy if I can 
handle a schooner.” 

“No man better,” said Billy. 

“And as for my character as a shipmate,” concluded 
Wicks, “go and ask my old firm.” 

“But look here!” cried Hadden. “How do you mean 
to manage? You can whisk round in a hansom, and 
no questions asked. But if you try to come on a 
quarterdeck, my boy, you’ll get nabbed.” 

“T’ll have to keep back till the last,” replied Wicks, 
“and take another name.” 

“But how about clearing? what other name?” asked 
Tommy, a little bewildered. 

“T don’t know yet,” returned the captain, with a grin. 
“T’ll see what the name is on my new certificate, and 
that’ll be good enough for me. If I can’t get one to 


352 THE WRECKER 


buy, though I never heard of such a thing, there’s old 
Kirkup, he’s turned some sort of farmer down Dondi 
way; he’ll hire me his.” 

“You seemed to speak as if you had a ship in view,” 
said Carthew. 

“So I have, too,” said Captain Wicks, “and a beauty. 
Schooner yacht Dream—got lines you never saw the 
beat of; and a witch to go. She passed me once off 
Thursday Island, doing two knots to my one and laying 
a point and a half better; and the Grace Darling was a 
ship that I was proud of. I took and tore my hair. 
The Dream’s been my dream ever since. That was in 
her old days, when she carried a blue ens’n. Grant 
Sanderson was the party as owned her; he was rich 
and mad, and got a fever at last somewhere about the 
Fly River, and took and died. The captain brought 
the body back to Sydney, and paid off. Well, it turned 
out Grant Sanderson had left any quantity of wills 
and any quantity of widows, and no fellow could make 
out which was the genuine article. All the widows 
brought lawsuits against all the rest, and every will 
had a firm of lawyers on the quarterdeck as long as 
your arm. They tell me it was one of the biggest 
turns-to that ever was seen, bar Tichborne; the Lord 
Chamberlain himself was floored, and so was the Lord 
Chancellor; and all that time the Dream lay rotting up 
by Glebe Point. Well, its done now; they’ve picked 
out a widow and a will; tossed up for it, as like as 
not; and the Dream’s for sale. She’ll go cheap; she’s 

had a long turn-to at rotting.” 
“What size is she?” 

“Well, big enough. We don’t want her bigger. A 
hundred and ninety, going two hundred,” replied the 
captain. “She’s fully big for us three; it would be all 
the better if we had another hand, though it’s a pity 
too, when you can pick up natives for half nothing. 
Then we must have a cook. I can fix raw sailor-men, 
but there’s no going to sea with a new-chum cook. I 
can lay hands on the man we want for that: a Highway 


5s iv ce 


ee 


THE REMITTANCE MAN 303 


boy, an old shipmate of mine, of the name of Amalu. 
Cooks first rate, and it’s always better to have a 
native; he ain’t fly, you can turn him to as you please, 
and he don’t know enough to stand out for his rights.” 

From the moment that Captain Wicks joined in the 
conversation, Carthew recovered interest and confi- 
dence; the man (whatever he might have done) was 
plainly good-natured, and plainly capable; if he 
thought well of the enterprise, offered to contribute 
money, brought experience, and could thus solve at a 
word the problem of the trade, Carthew was content 
to go ahead. As for Hadden, his cup was full; he and 
Bostock forgave each other in champagne; toast fol- 
lowed toast; it was proposed and carried amid accla- 
mation to change the name of the schooner (when she 
should be bought) to the Currency Lass; and the 
Currency Lass Island Trading Company was practi- 
cally founded before dusk. 

Three days later, Carthew stood before the lawyer, 
still in his jean suit, received his hundred and fifty 
pounds, and proceeded rather timidly to ask for more 
indulgence. 

“I have a chance to get on in the world,” he said. 
“By to-morrow evening I expect to be part owner 
of a ship.” . 

“Dangerous property, Mr. Carthew,’ 

er. 

“Not if the partners work her themselves and stand 
to go down along with her,” was the reply. 

“T conceive it possible you might make something of 
it that way,” returned the other. ‘But are you a sea- 
man? I thought you had been in the diplomatic 
service.” 
~ “T am an old yachtsman,” said Norris. “And I must 
do the best I can. A fellow can’t live in New South 
Wales upon diplomacy. But the point I wish to pre- 
pare you for is this. It will be impossible I should 
present myself here next quarter-day; we expect to 
make a six-months’ cruise of it among the islands.” 


> said the. law- 


354 THE WRECKER 


“Sorry, Mr. Carthew: I can’t hear of that,” replied 
the lawyer. 

“T mean upon the same conditions as the last,” said 
Carthew. 

“The conditions are exactly opposite,” said the law- 
yer. ‘Last time I had reason to know you were in the 
colony; and even then I stretched a point. This time, 
by your own confession, you are contemplating a 
breach of the agreement; and I give you warning if you 
carry it out and I receive proof of it (for I will agree 
to regard this conversation as confidential) I shall have 
no choice but to do my duty. Be here on quarter-day, 
or your allowance ceases.” 

“This 1s very hard and, I think, rather silly,” re- 
turned Carthew. 

“It is not of my doing. I have my instructions,” 
said the lawyer. 

“And you so read these instructions, that I am to be 
prohibited from making an honest livelihood?” asked 
Carthew. 

“Let us be frank,” said the lawyer. “TI find nothing 
in these instructions about an honest livelihood. I 
have no reason to suppose my clients care anything 
about that. I have reason to suppose only one thing,— 
that they mean you shall stay in this colony, and to 
guess another, Mr. Carthew. And to guess another.” 

“What do you mean by that?” asked Norris. 

“T mean that I imagine, on very strong grounds, that 
your family desire to see no more of you,” said the 
~ lawyer. “O, they may be very wrong; but that is the 
impression conveyed, that is what I suppose I am paid 
to bring about, and I have no choice but to try and 
earn my hire.” 

“T would scorn to deceive you,” said Norris, with a 
strong flush, ‘you have guessed rightly. My family 
refuse to see me; but I am not going to England, I 
am going to the islands. How does that affect the 
islands?” 

“Ah, but I don’t know that you are going to the 


E 


THE REMITTANCE MAN 355 


islands,” said the lawyer, looking down, and spearing 
the blotting-paper with a pencil. | 

“T beg your pardon. I have the pleasure of inform- 
ing you,” said Norris. 

“T am afraid, Mr. Carthew, that I cannot regard 
that communication as official,’ was the slow reply. 

“T am not accustomed to have my word doubted!” 
cried Norris. 

“Hush! I allow no one to raise his voice in my 
office,’ said the lawyer. “And for that matter—you 
seem to be a young gentleman of sense—consider what 
I know of you. You are a discarded son; your family 
pays money to be shut of you. What have you done? 
I don’t know. But do you not see how foolish I should 
be, if I exposed my business reputation on the safe- 
guard of the honour of a gentleman of whom I know 
just so much and no more? This interview is very dis- 
agreeable. Why prolong it? Write home, get my in- 
structions changed, and I will change my behaviour. 
Not otherwise.” 

“IT am very fond of three hundred a year,” said 
Norris, “but I cannot pay the price required. I shall 
not have the pleasure of seeing you again.” 

“You must please yourself,” said the lawyer. “Fail 
to be here next quarter-day, and the thing stops. But 
I warn you, and I mean the warning in a friendly 
spirit. ‘Three months later you will be here begging, 
and I shall have no choice but to show you in the 
street.” 

“T wish you a good-evening,” said Norris. 

“The same to you, Mr. Carthew,” retorted the law- 
yer, and rang for his clerk. 

So it befell that Norris, during what remained to 
him of arduous days in Sydney, saw not again the face 
of his legal adviser; and he was already at sea, and 
land was out of sight, when Hadden brought him a 
Sydney paper, over which he had been dozing in the 
shadow of the galley, and showed him an advertise- 
ment. 


b] 


356 THE WRECKER 


“Mr. Norris Carthew is earnestly entreated to call 
without delay at the office of Mr. » where im- 
portant intelligence awaits him.” 

“Tt must manage to wait for six months,” said 
Norris, lightly enough, but yet conscious of a pang of 
curiosity. 








| 


CHAPTER XXIII 
THE BUDGET OF THE “CURRENCY LASS” 


EFORE noon on the 26th of November, there 

cleared from the port of Sydney the schooner, 
Currency Lass. The owner, Norris Carthew, was on 
board in the somewhat unusual position of mate; the 
master’s name purported to be William Kirkup; the 
cook was a Hawaiian boy, Joseph Amalu; and there 
were two hands before the mast, Thomas Hadden and 
Richard Hemstead, the latter chosen partly because 
of his humble character, partly because he had an 
odd-job-man’s handiness with tools. The Currency 
Lass was bound for the South Sea Islands, and first 
of all for Butaritari in the Gilberts, on a register; but 
it was understood about the harbour that her cruise 
was more than half a pleasure trip. A friend of the 
late Grant Sanderson (of Auchentroon and Kilclarty) 
might have recognised in that tall-masted ship the 
transformed and rechristened Dream; and a Lloyd’s 
surveyor, had the services of such an one been called 
in requisition, must have found abundant subject of 
remark. 

For time, during her three years’ inaction, had eaten 
deep into the Dream and her fittings; she had sold in 
consequence a shade above her value as old junk; and 
the three adventurers had scarce been able to afford 
even the most vital repairs. The rigging, indeed, had 
been partly renewed, and the rest set up; all Grant 
Sanderson’s old canvas had been patched together into 
one decently serviceable suit of sails; Grant Sander- 
son’s masts still stood, and might have wondered at 

357 


358 THE WRECKER 


themselves. ‘I haven’t the heart to tap them,” Captain 


Wicks used to observe, as he squinted up their height — 


or patted their rotundity; and “as rotten as our fore- 
mast” was an accepted metaphor in the ship’s com- 
pany. The sequel rather suggests it may have been 
sounder than was thought; but no one knew for cer- 
tain, just as no one except the captain appreciated the 
dangers of the cruise. The captain, indeed, saw with 
clear eyes and spoke his mind aloud; and though a man 
of an astonishing hot-blooded courage, following life 
and taking its dangers in the spirit of a hound upon the 
slot, he had made a point of a big whale-boat. “Take 
your choice,” he had said; “either new masts and 
rigging or that boat. I simply ain’t going to sea with- 
out the one or the other. Chicken coops are good 
enough, no doubt, and so is a dinghy; but they ain't 
for Joe.” And his partners had been forced to consent, 
and saw six and thirty pounds of their small capital 
vanish in the turn of a hand. 

All four had toiled the best part of six weeks getting 
ready; and though Captain Wicks was of course not 
seen or heard of, a fifth was there to help them, a fellow 
in a bushy red beard, which he would sometimes lay 
aside when he was below, and who strikingly resem- 
bled Captain Wicks in voice and character. As for 
Captain Kirkup, he did not appear till the last mo- 
ment, when he proved to be a burly mariner, bearded 
like Abou Ben Adhem. All the way down the harbour 
and through the Heads, his milk-white whiskers blew 
in the wind and were conspicuous from shore; but the 
Currency Lass had no sooner turned her back upon 
the lighthouse, than he went below for the inside .of 
five seconds and reappeared clean shaven. So many 
doublings and devices were required to get to sea with 
an unseaworthy ship and a captain that was “wanted.” 
Nor might even these have sufficed, but for the fact 


: 


‘ 


* 


f 
' 


that Hadden was a public character, and the whole ~ 


cruise regarded with an eye of indulgence as one of — 
Tom’s engaging eccentricities. The ship, besides, had 


. 


| 
J 


THE “CURRENCY LASS” 359 


been a yacht before; and it came the more natural 
to allow her still some of the dangerous liberties of her 
old employment. 

A strange ship they had made of it, her lofty spars 
disfigured with patched canvas, her panelled cabin 
fitted for a trade-room with rude shelves. And the 
life they led in that anomalous schooner was no less 
curious than herself. Amalu alone berthed forward; 
the rest occupied staterooms, camped upon the satin 
divans, and sat down in Grant Sanderson’s parquetry 
smoking-room to meals of junk and potatoes, bad of 
their kind and often scant in quantity. Hemstead 
grumbled; Tommy had occasional moments of revolt 
and increased the ordinary by a few haphazard tins or 
a bottle of his own brown sherry. But Hemstead 
grumbled from habit, Tommy revolted only for the 
moment, and there was underneath a real and general 
acquiescence in these hardships. For besides onions 
and potatoes, the Currency Lass may be said to have 
gone to sea without stores. She carried two thousand 
pounds’ worth of assorted trade, advanced on credit, 
their whole hope and fortune. It was upon this that 
they subsisted—mice in their.own granary. They dined 
upon their future profits; and every scanty meal was 
so much in the savings bank. 

Republican as were their manners, there was no 
practical, at least no dangerous, lack of discipline. 
Wicks was the only sailor on board, there was none to 
criticise; and besides, he was so easy-going, and so 
merry-minded, that none could bear to disappoint him. 
Carthew did his best, partly for the love of doing it, 
partly for love of the captain; Amalu was a willing 
drudge, and even Hemstead and Hadden turned to 
upon occasion with a will. Tommy’s department was 
the trade and trade-room; he would work down in the 
hold or over the shelves of the cabin, till the Sydney 
dandy was unrecognisable; come up at last, draw a 
bucket of sea-water, bathe, change, and lie down on 
deck over a big sheaf of Sydney Heralds and Dead 


360 THE WRECKER 
Birds, or perhaps with a volume of Buckle’s History 
of Civilisation, the standard work selected for that — 
cruise. In the latter case, a smile went round the ~ 
ship, for Buckle almost invariably laid his student out, 
and when Tom awoke again he was almost always in 
the humour for brown sherry. The connection was so 
well established that “a glass of Buckle” or “a, bottle 
of civilisation” became current pleasantries on board 
the Currency Lass. 

Hemstead’s province was that of the repairs, and he 
had his hands full. Nothing on board but was de- 
cayed in a proportion; the lamps leaked; so did the 
decks; door knobs came off in the hand, moulding 
parted company with the panels, the pump declined 
to suck, and the defective bathroom came near to 
swamp the ship. Wicks insisted that all the nails were 
long ago consumed, and that she was only glued to- 
gether by the rust. ‘You shouldn’t make me laugh 
so much, Tommy,” he would say. “I’m afraid [ll 
shake the stern posts out of her.” And, as Hemstead 
went to and fro with his tool-basket on an endless 
round of tinkering, Wicks lost no opportunity of chaff- 
ing him upon his duties. “If you’d turn to at sailoring 
or washing paint or something useful, now,’ he would 
say, “I could see the fun of it. But to be mending 
things that haven’t no insides to them, appears to me 
the height of foolishness.” And doubtless these con- 
tinual pleasantries helped to reassure the landsmen, 
who went to and fro unmoved, under circumstances 
that might have daunted Nelson. | 

The weather was from the outset splendid, and the 
wind fair and steady. The ship sailed like a witch. 
“This Currency Lass is a powerful old girl, and has 
more complaints than I would care to put a name on,” 
the captain would say, as he pricked the chart; “but 
she could show her blooming heels to anything of her 
size in the Western Pacific.” To wash decks, relieve 
the wheel, do the day’s work after dinner on the 
smoking-room table, and take in kites at night.— 


~ 


THE “CURRENCY LASS” 361 


such was the easy routine of their life. In the evening 
—above all, if Tommy had produced some of his civili- 
sation—yarns and music were the rule. Amalu had a 
sweet Hawaiian voice; and Hemstead, a great hand 
~ upon the banjo, accompanied his own quavering tenor 
with effect. There was a sense in which the little man 
could sing. It was great to hear him deliver My Boy 
Tamme in Austrylian; and the words (some of the 
worst of the ruffian Macneill’s) were hailed in his 
version with inextinguishable mirth. 


“Where hye ye been a’ dye?” 
he would ask, and answer himself:— 


“T’ve been by burn and flowery brye, 
Meadow green an’ mountain grye, - 
Courtin’ o’ this young thing, 

Just come frye her mammie.” 


It was the accepted jest for all hands to greet the con- 
clusion of this song with the simultaneous ery: “My 
word!” thus winging the arrow of ridicule with a 
feather from the singer’s wind. But he had his revenge 
with Home, Sweet Home, and Where 1s my Wandering 
Boy To-night?—ditties into which he threw the most 
intolerable pathos. It appeared he had no home, nor 
had ever had one, nor yet any vestige of a family, ex- 
cept a truculent uncle, a baker in Newcastle, N.S.W. 
His domestic sentiment was therefore wholly in the 
air, and expressed an unrealised ideal. Or perhaps, of 
all his experiences, this of the Currency Lass, with its 
kindly, playful, and tolerant society, approached it the 
most nearly. 

It. is perhaps because I know the sequel, but I can 
never think upon this voyage without a profound sense 
of pity and mystery; of the ship (once the whim of a 
rich blackguard) faring with her battered fineries and 
upon her homely errand, across the plains of ocean, and 
past the gorgeous scenery of dawn and sunset; and the 


362 THE WRECKER | 


ship’s company, so strangely assembled, so Britishly — 
chuckle-headed, filling their days with chaff in place 
of conversation; no human book on board with them 
except Hadden’s Buckle, and not a creature fit either 
tc read or to understand it; and the one mark of any 
civilised interest being when Carthew filled in his 
spare hours with the pencil and the brush: the whole 
unconscious crew of them posting in the meanwhile 
towards so tragic a disaster. 

Twenty-eight days out of Sydney, on Christmas eve, 
they fetched up to the entrance of the lagoon, and plied 
all that night outside, keeping their position by the 
lights of the fishers on the reef and the outlines of the 
palms against the cloudy sky. With the break of day, 
the schooner was hove to, and the signal for a pilot 
shown. But it was plain her lights must have been 
observed in the darkness by the native fishermen, and 
word carried to the settlement, for a boat was already 
under way. She came towards them across the lagoon 
under a great press of sail, lying dangerously down, 
so that at times, in the heavier puffs, they thought 
she would turn turtle; covered the distance in fine 
style, luffed up smartly alongside, and emitted a hag- 
gard looking white man in pyjamas. 

“Good-mornin’, Cap’n,” said he, when he had made 
good his entrance. “I was taking you for a Fiji man- 
of-war, what with your flush decks and them spars. 
Well, gen’lemen all, here’s wishing you a Merry Christ- 
mas and a Happy New Year,” he added, and lurched 
against a stay. 

“Why, you’re never the pilot?” exclaimed Wicks, 
studying him with a profound disfavour. ‘You’ve 
never taken a ship in—don’t tell me!”’ 

“Well, I should guess I have,” returned the pilot. 
“T’m Captain Dobbs, I am; and when I take charge, 
the captain of that ship can go below and shave.” 

“But, man alive! you’re drunk, man!” cried the cap- 
tain. 

“Drunk!” repeated Dobbs. “You can’t have seen 


io. 


THE “CURRENCY LASS” 363 


much life if you call me drunk. I’m only just begin- 
ning. Come night, I won’t say; I guess I’ll be properly 
full by then. But now I’m the soberest man in all Big 
Muggin.” 

“It won’t do,” retorted Wicks. ‘Not for Joseph, 
sir. I can’t have you piling up my schooner.” 

“All right,” said Dobbs, “lay and rot where you are, 
or take and go in and pile her up for yourself like the 
captain of the Leslie. That’s business, I guess; grudged 
me twenty dollars’ pilotage, and lost twenty thousand 
in trade and a brand-new schooner; ripped the keel 
right off of her, and she went down in the inside of four 
minutes, and lies in twenty fathoms, trade and all.” 

“What’s all this?” cried Wicks. ‘Trade? What 
vessel was this Leslie, anyhow?” 

“Consigned to Cohen and Co., from,’Frisco,”’ re- 
turned the pilot, “and badly wanted. There’s a barque 
inside filling up for Hamburg—you see her spars over 
there; and there’s two more ships due all the way from 
Germany, one in two months, they say, and one in 
three; and Cohen and Co.’s agent (that’s Mr. 
Topelius) has taken and lain down with the jaundice 
on the strength of it. I guess most people would, in his 
shoes; no trade, no copra, and twenty hundred ‘ton of 
shipping due. If you’ve any copra on board, Cap’n, 
here’s your chance. Topelius will buy, gold down, and 
give three cents. It’s all found money to him, the 
way it is, whatever he pays for it. And that’s what 
come of going back on the pilot.” 

“Hixcuse me one moment, Captain Dobbs. I wish 
to speak with my mate,” said the captain, whose face 
had begun to shine and his eyes to sparkle. 

“Please yourself,” replied the pilot. ‘You couldn’t 
think of offering a man a nip, could you? just to brace 
him up. This kind of thing looks damned inhospitable, 
and gives a schooner a bad name.” 

“Pil talk about that after the anchor’s down,” re- 
turned Wicks, and he drew Carthew forward. “I say,” 
he whispered, “here’s a fortune.” 


364 THE WRECKER 


“How much do you call that?” asked Carthew. 

“T can’t put a figure on it yet— I daren’t!” said the 
captain. “We might cruise twenty years and not find 
the match of it. And suppose another ship came in 
to-night? Everything’s possible! And the difficulty is 
this Dobbs. He’s drunk as a marine. How can we 
trust him? We ain’t insured, worse luck!” 

“Suppose you took him aloft and got him to point 
out the channel?” suggested Carthew. “If he tallied at 
all with the chart, and didn’t fall out of the rigging, 
perhaps we might risk it.” 

“Well, all’s risk here,’ returned the captain. 
“Take the wheel yourself, and stand by. Mind, if 
there’s two orders, follow mine, not his. Set the cook 
for’ard with the heads’ls, and the two others at the 
main sheet, and see they don’t sit on it.” With that 
he called the pilot; they swarmed aloft in the fore 
rigging, and presently after there was bawled down the 
welcome order to ease sheets and fill away. 

At a quarter before nine o’clock on Christmas morn- 
ing, the anchor was let go. 

The first cruise of the Currency Lass had thus ended 
in a stroke of fortune almost beyond hope. She had 
brought two thousand pounds’ worth of trade, straight 
as a homing pigeon, to the place where it was most 
required. And Captain Wicks (or rather, Captain 
Kirkup) showed himself the man to make the best of 
his advantage. For hard upon two days he walked a 
verandah with Topelius; for hard upon two days his 
partners watched from the neighbouring public-house 
the field of battle; and the lamps were not yet lighted 
on the evening of the second before the enemy sur- 
rendered. Wicks came across to the Sans Souci, as the 
saloon was called, his face nigh black, his eyes almost 
closed and all bloodshot, and yet bright as lighted 
matches, 

“Come here, boys,” he said; and when they were 
some way off among the palms, “I hold twenty-four,” 


a 


THE “CURRENCY LASS” 365 


he added, in a voice scarce recognisable, and doubtless 
referring to the venerable game of cribbage. 

“What do you mean?” asked Tommy. 

“T’ve sold the trade,” answered Wicks; “or, rather, 
I’ve sold only some of it, for I kept back all the mess 
beef and half the flour and biscuit; and, by God, we’re 
still provisioned for four months! By God, it’s as good 
as stolen!” 

“My word!” cried Hemstead. 

“But what have you sold it for?” gasped Carthew, 
the captain’s almost insane excitement shaking his 
nerve. 

“Let me tell it my own way,” cried Wicks, loosening 
bis neck. ‘“‘Let me get at it gradual, or I’ll explode. 
I’ve not only sold it, boys, I’ve wrung out a charter 
on my own terms to ’Frisco and back; on my own 
terms. I made a point of it.. I fooled him first by 
making believe I wanted copra, which of course I knew 
he wouldn’t hear of—couldn’t, in fact; and whenever 
he showed fight, I trotted out copra, and that man 
dived! I would take nothing but copra, you see; and 
so I’ve got the blooming lot in specie—all but two short 
bills on ’Frisco. And the sum? Well, this whole ad- 
venture, including two thousand pounds of credit, cost 
us two thousand seven hundred and some odd. That’s 
all paid back; in thirty days’ cruise we’ve paid for the 
schooner and the trade. Heard ever any man ‘the 
match of that? And it’s not all! For besides that,” 
said the captain, hammering his words, ‘‘we’ve got 
Thirteen Blooming Hundred Pounds of profit to di- 
vide. I bled him in four Thou.!” he cried, in a voice 
that broke like a schoolboy’s. 

For:a moment the partners looked upon their chief 
with stupefaction, incredulous surprise their only feel- 
ing. Tommy was the first to grasp the consequences. 

“Here!” he said, in a hard business tone. “Come 
back to that saloon. I’ve got to get drunk.” 

“You must please excuse me, boys,” said the cap- 
tain, earnestly, “I daren’t taste nothing. If I was to 


366 THE WRECKER 


drink one glass of beer, it’s my belief I’d have the 
apoplexy. The last scrimmage, and the blooming tri- 
umph, pretty nigh-hand done me.” 

“Well, then, three cheers for the captain!” proposed 
Tommy. | 

But Wicks held up a shaking hand. ‘Not that 
either, boys,” he pleaded. “Think of the other buffer, 
and let him down easy. If I’m like this, just fancy 
what Topelius is! If he heard us singing out, he’d have 
the staggers.” 

As a matter of fact, Topelius accepted his defeat 
with a good grace; but the crew of the wrecked Leslie, 
who were in the same employment and loyal to their 
firm, took the thing more bitterly. Rough words and 
ugly looks were common. Once even they hooted Cap- 
tain Wicks from the saloon verandah; the Currency 
Lasses drew out on the other side; for some minutes 
there had like to have been a battle in Butaritari; and 
though the occasion passed off without blows, it left 
on either side an increase of ill-feeling. 

No such small matter could affect the happiness of 
the successful traders. Five days more the ship lay 
in the lagoon, with little employment for any but 
Tommy and the captain—for Topelius’s natives dis- 
charged cargo and brought ballast; the time passed 
like a pleasant dream; the adventurers sat up half the 
night debating and praising their good fortune, or 
stayed by day in the narrow isle, gaping like Cockney 
tourists; and on the first of the new year, the Currency 
Lass weighed anchor for the second time and set sail — 
for Frisco, attended by the same fine weather and good 
luck. She crossed the doldrums with but small delay; 
on a wind and in ballast of broken coral, she outdid 
expectations; and what added to the happiness of the 
ship’s company, the small amount of work that fell on 
them to do was now lessened by the presence of 
another hand. This was the boatswain of the Leslie; 
he had been on bad terms with his own captain, had 
already spent his wages in the saloons of Butaritari, 


a 


THE “CURRENCY LASS” 367 


had wearied of the place, and while all his shipmates 
coldly refused to set foot on board the Currency Lass, 
he had offered to work his passage to the coast. He 
was a north of Ireland man, between Scotch and Irish, 
rough, loud, humourous, and emotional, not without 
sterling qualities, and an expert and careful sailor. 
His frame of mind was different indeed from that of 
his new shipmates; instead of making an unexpected 
fortune, he had lost a berth; and he was besides dis- 
gusted with the rations, and really appalled at the 
condition of the schooner. A stateroom door had stuck, 
the first day at sea, and Mac (as they called him) laid 
his strength to it and plucked it from the hinges. 

“Glory!” said he, “this ship’s rotten.” 

“T believe you, my boy,” said Captain Wicks. 

igs next day the sailor was observed with his nose 
aloft. 

“Don’t you get looking at these sticks,” the captain 
said, “or you'll have a fit and fall overboard.” 

Mac turned towards the speaker with rather a wild 
eye. ‘Why, I see what looks like a patch of dry rot. 
up yonder, that I bet I could stick my fist into,” 
said he. 

“Looks as if a fellow could stick his head into it, 
don’t it?” returned Wicks. ‘But there’s no good prying 
into things that can’t be mended.” 

“T think I was a Currency Ass to come on board of 
her!” reflected Mac. 

“Well, I never said she was seaworthy,” replied the 
captain: “I only said she could show her blooming: 
heels to anything afloat. And besides, I don’t. know 
that it’s dry rot; I kind of sometimes hope it isn’t. 
Here; turn to and heave the log; that’ll cheer you up.” 

“Well, there’s no denying it, youre a holy captain,” 
said Mac. 

And from that day on, he made but the one reference 
- to the ship’s condition; and that was whenever Tommy 
drew upon his cellar. ‘Here’s to the junk trade!” he 
would say, as he held out his can of sherry. 


368 THE WRECKER 


“Why do you always say that?” asked Tommy. 

“I had an uncle in the business,” replied Mac, and 
launched at once into a yarn, in which an incredible 
number of characters were “laid out as nice as you 
would want to see,” and the oaths made up about two- 
fifths of every conversation. 

Only once he gave them a taste of his violence; he 
talked of it, indeed, often; “I’m rather a violent man,” 
he would say, not without pride; but this was the only 
specimen. Of a sudden, he turned on Hemstead in the 
ship’s waist, knocked him against the foresail boom, 
then knocked him under it, and had set him up and 
knocked him down once more, before any one had 
drawn a breath. 

“Here! Belay that!” roared Wicks, leaping to his 
feet. “JI won’t have none of this.” 

Mac turned to the captain with ready civility. “I 
only want to learn him manners,” said he. ‘He took 
and called me Irishman.” 

“Did he?” said Wicks. “O, that’s a different story! 
What made you do it, you tomfool? You ain’t big 
enough to call any man that.” 

“I didn’t call him it,” spluttered Hemstead, through 
his blood and tears. ‘I only mentioned like he was.” 

“Well, let’s have no more of it,” said Wicks. 

“But you are Irish, ain’t you?” Carthew asked of his 
new shipmate shortly after. 

“I may be,” replied Mac, “but I’ll allow no Sydney 
duck to call me so. No,” he added, with a sudden 
heated countenance, “nor any Britisher that walks! 
Why, look here,” he went on, “you’re a young swell, 
aren’t you? Suppose I called you that! ‘I’ll show 
you,’ you would say, and turn to and take it out of 
me straight.” 

On the 28th of January, when in lat. 27° 20’ N., 
long. 177° W., the wind chopped suddenly into the 
west, not very strong, but puffy with flaws of rain. - 
The captain, eager for easting, made a fair wind of 
it and guyed the booms out wing and wing. It was 


\ 


THE “CURRENCY LASS” 369 


Tommy’s trick at the wheel, and as it was within half 
an hour of the relief (7.30 in the morning), the cap- 
tain judged it not worth while to change him. 

The puffs were heavy but short; there was nothing 
to be called a squall, no danger to the ship, and scarce 
more than usual to the doubtful spars. All hands were 
on deck in their oilskins, expecting breakfast; the 
galley smoked, the ship smelt of coffee, all were in 
good-humour to be speeding eastward a full nine; when 
the rotten foresail tore suddenly between two cloths 
and then split to either hand. It was for all the world 
as though some archangel with a huge sword had 
slashed it with the figure of a cross; all hands ran 
to secure the slatting canvas; and in the sudden uproar 
and alert, Tommy Hadden lost his head., Many of his 
days have been passed since then. in explaining how 
the thing happened; of these explanations it will be 
sufficient to say that they were all different and none 
satisfactory; and the gross fact remains that the main 
boom gybed, carried away the tackle, broke the main- 
mast some three feet above the deck and whipped it 
overboard. For near a minute the suspected foremast 
gallantly resisted; then followed its companion; and 
by the time the wreck was cleared, of the whole beau- 
tiful fabric that enabled them to skim the seas, two 
ragged stumps remained. 

In these vast and solitary waters, to be dismasted 
is perhaps the worst calamity. Let the ship turn turtle 
and go down, and at least the pang is over. But men 
chained on a hulk may pass months scanning the empty 
sea line and counting the steps of death’s invisible 
approach. There is no help but in the boats, and what 
a help is that! There heaved the Currency Lass, for 
instance, a wingless lump, and the nearest human 
coast (that of Kauai in the Sandwiches) lay about a 
thousand miles to south and east of her. Over the way 
there, to men contemplating that passage in an open 
boat, all kinds of misery, and the fear of death and 
of madness, brooded. 


370 THE WRECKER 


A serious company sat down to breakfast; but the 
captain helped his neighbours with a smile. 

“Now, boys,” he said, after a pull at the hot coffee, 
‘we're done with this Currency Lass, and no mistake. 
One good job: we made her pay while she lasted, and 
she paid first-rate; and if we care to try our hand 
again, we can try it in style. Another good job: we 
have a fine, stiff, roomy boat, and you know who you 
have to thank for that. We’ve got six lives to save, 
and a pot of money; and the point is, where are we to 
take ’em?” > 

“Tt’s all two thousand miles to the nearest of the 
Sandwiches, I fancy,” observed Mace. 

“No, not so bad as that,’ returned the captain. 
“But it’s bad enough: rather better’n a thousand.” 

“T know a man who once did twelve hundred in a 
boat,” said Mac, “and he had all he wanted. He 
fetched ashore in the Marquesas, and never set a foot 
on anything floating from that day to this. He said 
he would rather put a pistol to his head and knock 
his brains out.” 

“Ay, ay!” said Wicks. ‘Well I remember a boat’s 
crew that made this very island of Kauai, and from 
just about where we lie, or a bit farther. When they 
got up with the land, they were clean crazy. There 
was an iron-bound coast and an Old Bob Ridley of a 
surf on. The natives hailed ’em from fishing-boats, 
and sung out it couldn’t be done at the money. Much 
they cared! there was the land, that was all they 
knew; and they turned to and drove the boat slap 
ashore in the thick of it, and was all drowned but 
one. No; boat trips are my eye,” concluded the cap- 
tain, gloomily. 

The tone was surprising in a man of his indomitable 
temper. “Come, Captain,” said Carthew, “you have 
something else up your sleeve; out with it.” 

“It’s a fact,” admitted Wicks. “You see there’s a 
raft of little bally reefs about here, kind of chicken-pox 
on the chart. Well, I looked ’em all up, and there’s 


=— se ——— 


THE “CURRENCY LASS” 371 


one—Midway or Brooks they call it, not forty mile 
from our assigned position—that I got news of. It 
turns out it’s a coaling station of the Pacific Mail,” 
he said, simply. 

“Well, and I know it ain’t no such thing,” said Mac. 
“TI been quartermaster in that line myself.” 

“All right,” returned Wicks. “There’s the book. 
Read what Hoyt says—read it aloud and let the others 
hear.” 

Hoyt’s falsehood (as readers know) was explicit; in- 
credulity was impossible, and the news itself delightful 
beyond hope. Each saw in his mind’s eye the boat 
drawn in to a trim island with a wharf, coal-sheds, 
gardens, the Stars and Stripes, and the white cottage 
of the keeper; saw themselves idle a few weeks in 
tolerable quarters, and then step on board the China 
Mail, romantic waifs, and yet with pocketsful of 
money, calling for champagne and waited on by troops 
of stewards. Breakfast that had begun so dully, ended 
amid sober jubilation, and all hands turned immedi- 
ately to prepare the boat. 

Now that all spars were gone, it was no easy job to 
get her launched. Some of the necessary cargo was 
first stowed on board; the specie, in particular, being 
packed in a strong chest and secured with lashings 
to the afterthwart in case of a capsize. Then a piece 
of the bulwark was razed to the level of the deck, and 
the boat swung thwart-ship, made fast with a slack- 
line to either stump, and successfully run out. For a 
voyage of forty miles to hospitable quarters, not much 
food or water was required; but they took both in 
superfluity. Amalu and Mac, both ingrained sailor- 
men, had chests which were the headquarters of their 
lives; two more chests with hand-bags, oilskins, and 
blankets supplied the others; Hadden, amid general 
applause, added the last case of the brown sherry; 
the captain brought the log, instruments, and chronom- 
eter; nor did Hemstead forget the banjo or a pinned 
handkerchief of Butaritari shells. 


372 THE WRECKER 


It was about three p.m. when they pushed off, and 
(the wind being still westerly) fell to the oars. “Well, 
we've got the guts out of you!” was the captain’s 
nodded farewell to the hulk of the Currency Lass, 
which presently shrank and faded in the sea. A little 
later a calm succeeded with much rain; and the first 
meal was eaten, and the watch below lay down to their 
uneasy slumber on the bilge under a roaring shower- 
bath. The twenty-ninth dawned overhead from out of 
rugged clouds; there is no moment when a boat at 
sea appears so trenchantly black and so conspicuously 
little; and the crew looked about them at the sky and 
water with a thrill of loneliness and fear. With sun- 
rise the trade set in, lusty and true to the point; sail 
was made; the boat flew; and by about four of the 
afternoon, they were well up with the closed part of 
the reef, and the captain standing on the thwart, and 
holding by the mast, was studying the island through 
the binoculars. 

“Well, and where’s my station?” cried Mac. 

“T don’t someway pick it up,” replied the captain. 

“No, nor never will!” retorted Mac, with a clang 
of despair and triumph in his tones. 

The truth was soon plain to all. No buoys, no 
beacons, no lights, no coal, no station; the castaways 
pulled through a lagoon and landed on an isle, where 
was no mark of man but wreckwood, and no sound but 
of the sea. For the sea-fowl that harboured and lived 
there at the epoch of my visit were then scattered into 
the uttermost parts of the ocean, and had left no traces 
of their sojourn besides dropped feathers and addled 
eggs. It was to this they had been sent, for this they 
had stooped all night over the dripping oars, hourly 
moving farther from relief. The boat, for as small as it 
was, was yet eloquent of the hands of men, a thing alone 
indeed upon the sea but yet in itself all human, and 
the isle, for which they had exchanged it, was inglor- 
iously savage, a place of distress, solitude, and hunger 
unrelieved. There was a strong glare and shadow of 


THE “CURRENCY LASS” 373 


the evening over all; in which they sat or lay, not 
speaking, careless even to eat, men swindled out of 
life and riches by a lying book. In the great good- 
nature of the whole party, no word of reproach had 
been addressed to Hadden, the author of these dis- 
asters. But the new blow was less magnanimously 
borne, and many angry glances rested on the captain. 

Yet it was himself who raised them from their 
lethargy. Grudgingly they obeyed, drew the boat be- 
yond tide-mark, and followed him to the top of the 
miserable islet, whence a view was commanded of the 
whole wheel of the horizon, then part darkened under 
the coming night, part dyed with the hues of the sunset 
and populous with the sunset clouds. Here the camp 
was pitched and a tent run up with the oars, sails, and 
mast. And here Amalu, at no man’s bidding, from 
the mere instinct of habitual service, built a fire and 
cooked a meal. Night was come, and the stars and the 
silver sickle of the new moon beamed overhead before 
the meal was ready. The cold sea shone about them, 
and the fire glowed in their faces, as they ate. Tommy 
had opened his case, and the brown sherry went the 
round; but it was long before they came to conver- 
sation. 

“Well, is it to be Kauai after all?” asked Mac sud- 
denly. 

“This is bad enough for me,” said Tommy. ‘‘Let’s 
stick it out where we are.” 

“Well, I can tell ye one thing,” said Mace, “if ye care 
to hear it. When I was in the China mail, we once 
made this island. It’s in the course from Honolulu.” 

“Deuce it is!” cried Carthew. ‘That settles it, then. 
Let’s stay. We must keep good fires going; and there’s 
plenty wreck,” 

“Lashings of wreck!” said the Irishman. ‘There’s 
nothing here but wreck and coffin boards.” 

“But we'll have to make a proper blyze,” objected 
Hemstead. “You can’t see a fire like this, not any wye 
awye, I mean.” 


374 THE WRECKER 


“Can’t you?” said Carthew. “Look around.” 

They did, and saw the hollow of the night, the bare 
bright face of the sea, and the stars regarding them; 
and the voices died in their bosoms at the spectacle. 
In that huge isolation, it seemed they must be visible 
from China on the one hand and California on the 
other. 

“My God, it’s dreary!” whispered Hemstead. 

“Dreary?” cried Mac, and fell suddenly silent. 

“It’s better than a boat, anyway,” said Hadden. 
“T’ve had my bellyful of boat.” 

“What kills me is that specie!” the captain broke 
out. “Think of all that riches—four thousand in gold, 
bad silver, and short bills—all found money, too!—and 
no more use than that much dung!” 

“T’ll tell you one thing,” said Tommy. “TI don’t like 
it being in the boat—I don’t care to have it so far 
away.” 

“Why, who’s to take it?” cried Mac, with a guffaw 
of evil laughter. | 

But this was not at all the feeling of the partners, 
who rose, clambered down the isle, brought back the 
inestimable treasure-chest slung upon two oars, and 
set it conspicuous in the shining of the fire. 

“There’s my beauty!” cried Wicks, viewing it with 
a cocked head. ‘“That’s better than a bonfire. What! 
we have a chest here, and bills for close upon two 
thousand pounds; there’s no show to that—it would go 
in your vest pocket—but the rest upwards of forty 
pounds avoirdupois of coined gold, and close on two 
hundredweight of Chile silver! What; ain’t that good 
enough to fetch a fleet? Do you mean to say that 
won't affect a ship’s compass? Do you mean to tell 
me the lookout won’t turn to and smell it?” he cried. 

Mac, who had no part nor lot in the bills, the forty 
pounds of gold, or the two hundredweight of silver, 
heard this with impatience, and fell into a_ bitter, 
choking laughter. ‘You'll see!” he said, harshly. 
“Youll be glad to feed them bills into the fire before 


THE “CURRENCY LASS” 375 


you're through with ut!” And he turned, passed by 
himself out of the ring of the firelight, and stood gazing 
seaward. 

His speech and his departure extinguished instantly 
those sparks of better humour kindled by the dinner 
and the chest. The group fell again to an ill-favoured 
silence, and Hemstead began to touch the banjo, as 
was his habit in the evening. His repertory was small: 
the chords of Home, Sweet Home fell under his fingers; 
and when he had played the symphony, he instinctively 
raised up his voice. “Be it never so ’umble, there’s no 
plyce like ’ome,” he sang. The last word was still upon 
his lips, when the instrument was snatched from him 
and dashed into the fire; and he turned with a cry to 
look into the furious countenance of Mac. 

“T’ll be damned if I stand this!” cried the captain, 
leaping up belligerent. 

“T told ye I was a voilent man,” said Mac, with a 
movement of deprecation very surprising in one of his 
character. ‘Why don’t he give me a chance, then? 
Haven’t we enough to bear the way we are?” And to 
the wonder and dismay of all, the man choked upon a 
sob. “It’s ashamed of meself I am,” he said presently, 
his Irish accent twenty-fold increased. “I ask all 
your pardons for me voilence; and especially the little 
man’s, who is a harmless crayture, and here’s me hand 
to’m, if he’ll condescind to take me by’t.” 

So this scene of barbarity and sentimentalism passed 
off, leaving behind strange and incongruous impres- 
sions. True, every one was perhaps glad when silence 
succeeded that all too appropriate music; true, Mac’s 
apology and subsequent behaviour rather raised him 
in the opinion of his fellow-castaways. But the dis- 
cordant note had been struck, and its harmonies tingled 
in the brain. In that savage, houseless isle, the pas- 
sions of man had sounded, if only for the moment, and 
all men trembled at the possibilities of horror. 

It was determined to stand watch and watch in case 
of passing vessels; and Tommy, on fire with an idea, 


376 THE WRECKER 


volunteered to stand the first. The rest crawled under 
the tent, and were soon enjoying that comfortable gift 
of sleep, which comes everywhere and to all men, 
quenching anxieties and speeding time. And no sooner 
were all settled, no sooner had the drone of many 
snorers begun to mingle with and overcome the surf, 
than Tommy stole from his post with the case of 
sherry, and dropped it in a quiet cove in a fathom of 
water. But the stormy inconstancy of Mac’s behaviour 
had no connection with a gill or two of wine; his pas- 
sions, angry and otherwise, were on a different sail- 
plan from his neighbours’; and there were possibilities 
of good and evil in that hybrid Celt beyond their 
prophecy. 

About two in the morning, the starry sky—or so it 
seemed, for the drowsy watchman had not observed 
the approach of any cloud—brimmed over in a deluge; 
and for three days it rained without remission. ‘The 
islet was a sponge, the castaways sops; the view all 
gone, even the reef concealed behind the curtain of the 
falling water. The fire was soon drowned out; after a 
couple of boxes of matches had been scratched in vain, 
it was decided to wait for better weather; and the 
party lived in wretchedness on raw tins and a ration 
of hard bread. 

By the 2nd of February, in the dark hours of the 
morning watch, the clouds were all blown by; the sun 
rose glorious; and once more the castaways sat by a 
quick fire, and drank hot coffee with the greed of 
brutes and sufferers. Thenceforward their affairs 
moved in a routine. A fire was constantly maintained; 
and this occupied one hand continuously, and the 
others for an hour or so in the day. Twice a day, all 
hands bathed in the lagoon, their chief, almost their 
only, pleasure. Often they fished in the lagoon with 
good success, And the rest was passed in lolling, stroll- 
ing, yarns, and disputation. The time of the China 
steamers was calculated to a nicety; which done, the 
thought was rejected and ignored. It was one that 


THE “CURRENCY LASS” 377 


would not bear consideration. The boat voyage having 
been tacitly set aside, the desperate part chosen to wait 
there for the coming of help or of starvation, no man 
had courage left to look his bargain in the face, far less 
to discuss it with his neighbours. But the unuttered 
terror haunted them; in every hour of idleness, at every 
moment of silence, it returned, and breathed a chill 
about the circle, and carried men’s eyes to the horizon. 
Then, in a panic of self-defence, they would rally to 
some other subject. And, in that lone spot, what else 
_was to be found to speak of but the treasure? 

That was indeed, the chief singularity, the one thing 
conspicuous in their island life; the presence of that 
chest of bills and specie dominated the mind like a ca- 
thedral; and there were besides connected with it certain 
irking problems well fitted to occupy the idle. Two 
thousand pounds were due to the Sydney firm: two 
thousand were clear profit, and fell to be divided in 
varying proportions among five. It had been agreed 
how the partners were to range; every pound of capital 
subscribed, every pound that fell due in wages, was 
to count for one “lay.” Of these, Tommy could claim 
five hundred and ten, Carthew one hundred. and 
seventy, Wicks one hundred and forty, and Hemstead 
and Amalu ten apiece: eight hundred and forty “lays” 
in all. What was the value of a lay? This was at first 
debated in the air and chiefly by the strength of 
Tommy’s lungs. Then followed a series of incorrect 
calculations; from which they issued, arithmetically 
foiled, but agreed from weariness upon an approximate 
value of £2 7s. 744d. The figures were admittedly in- 
correct; the sum of the shares came not to £2000, but 
to £1996 6s.—£3 14s. being thus left unclaimed. But 
it was the nearest they had yet found, and the highest 
as well, so that the partners were made the less critical 
by the contemplation of their splendid dividends. 
Wicks put in £100 and stood to draw captain’s wages 
for two months; his taking was £333 3s. 684d. Carthew 
had put in £150: he was to take out £401 18s. 64d. 


378 THE WRECKER 


Tommy’s £500 had grown to be £1213 12s. 934d.; and 
Amalu and Hemstead, ranking for wages only, had 
£22 16s. O¥d., each. 

From talking and brooding on these figures, 1t was 
but a step to opening the chest; and once the chest 
open, the glamour of the cash was irresistible. Hach 
felt that he must see his treasure separate with the eye 
of flesh, handle it in the hard coin, mark it for his 
own, and stand forth to himself the approved owner. 
And here an insurmountable difficulty barred the way. 
There were some seventeen shillings in English silver: 
the rest was Chile; and the Chile dollar, which had — 
been taken at the rate of six to the pound sterling, was 
practically their smallest coin. It was decided, there- 
fore, to divide the pounds only and to throw the shil- 
lings, pence, and fractions in a common fund. This, 
with the three pound fourteen already in the heel, 
made a total of seven pounds one shilling. 

“T’ll tell you,’ said Wicks. “Let Carthew and 
Tommy and me take one pound apiece, and Hemstead 
‘ties Amalu split the other four, and toss up for the odd 

O eh 

“O, rot!” said Carthew. “Tommy and I are burst- 
ing already. We can take half a sov. each, and let the 
other three have forty shillings.” 

“T’ll tell you now—it’s not worth splitting,” broke 
in Mac. “I’ve cards in my chest. Why don’t you play 
for the lump sum?” 

In that idle place, the proposal was accepted with 
delight. Mac, as the owner of the cards, was given a 
stake; the sum was played for in five games of crib- 
bage; and when Amalu, the last survivor of the 
tournament, was beaten by Mac, it was found the 
dinner-hour was past. After a hasty meal, they fell 
again immediately to cards, this time (on Carthew’s 
proposal) to Van John. It was then probably two p.m. 
of the 9th of February; and they played with varying 
chances for twelve hours, slept heavily, and rose late on 
‘the morrow to resume the game. All day of the 10th, 


THE “CURRENCY LASS” 379 


with grudging intervals for food, and with one long 
absence on the part of Tommy from which he returned 
dripping with the case of sherry, they continued to 
deal and stake. Night fled: they drew closer to the 
fire. It was maybe two in the morning, and Tommy 
was selling his deal by auction, as usual with that 
timid player; when Carthew, who didn’t intend to bid, 
had a@ moment of leisure and looked round him. He 
beheld the moonlight on the sea, the money piled and 
scattered in that incongruous place, the perturbed 
faces of the players; he felt in his own breast the 
familiar tumult; and it seemed as if there rose in his 
ears a sound of music, and the moon seemed still to 
shine upon a sea, but the sea was changed, and the 
Casino towered from among lamplit gardens, and the 
money clinked on the green board. “Good God!” he 
thought, “am I gambling again?” He looked the more 
curiously about the sandy table. He and Mac had 
played and won like gamblers; the mingled gold and 
silver lay by their places in the heap. Amalu and 
Hemstead had each more than held their own; but 
Tommy was cruel far to leeward, and the captain 
was reduced to perhaps fifty pounds. 

“T say, let’s knock off,” said Carthew. 

“Give that man a glass of Buckle,” said some one, 
and a fresh bottle was opened, and the game went in- 
exorably on. 

Carthew was himself too heavy a winner to with- 
draw or to say more; and all the rest of the night he 
must look on at the progress of this folly and make 
gallant attempts to lose with the not uncommon conse- 
quences of winning more. The first dawn of the 11th 
February found him well-nigh desperate. It chanced 
he was then dealer, and still winning. He had just 
dealt a round of many tens; every one had staked 
heavily; the captain had put up all that remained 
to him, twelve pounds in gold and a few dollars; and 
Carthew, looking privately at his cards before he 
showed them, found he held a natural. 


380 THE WRECKER 


“See here, you fellows,” he broke out, “this is sicken- 
ing business, and I’m done with it for one.” So saying, 
he showed his cards, tore them across, and rose from 
the ground. 

The company stared and murmured in mere amaze- 
ment; but Mac stepped gallantly to his support. 

“We've had enough of it, I do believe,” said he. 
“But of course it was all fun, and here’s my counters 
back. All counters in, boys!” and he began to pour his 
winnings into the chest, which stood fortunately near 
him. 

Carthew stepped across and wrung him by the hand. 
“T’ll never forget this,” he said. 

“And what are ye going to do with the Highway 
boy and the plumber?” inquired Mac, in a low tone of 
voice. “They’ve both wan, ye see.” 

“That’s true!” said Carthew aloud. “Amalu and 
Hemstead, count your winnings; Tommy and I pay 
that.” 

It was carried without speech; the pair glad enough 
to receive their winnings, it mattered not from whence; 
and Tommy, who had lost about five hundred pounds, 
delighted with the compromise. 

“And how about Mac?” asked Hemstead. “Is he 
to lose all?” 

“IT beg your pardon, plumber. I’m sure ye mean 
well,” returned the Irishman, “but you’d better shut 
your face, for I’m not that kind of aman. If I tought 
I had wan that money fair, there’s never a soul here 
could get it from me. But I t’ought it was in fun; 
that was my mistake, ye see; and there’s no man big 
enough upon this island to give a present to my 
mother’s son. So there’s my opinion to ye, plumber, 
and you can put it in your pockut till required.” 

“Well, I will say, Mac, you're a gentleman,” said 
Carthew, as he helped him shovel back his winnings 
into the treasure-chest. ! 

“Divil a fear of it, sir! a drunken sailor-man,” said 

| Mac. | 


THE “CURRENCY LASS” 381 


The captain had sat some while with his face in his 
hands; now he rose mechanically, shaking and stum- 
bling like a drunkard after a debauch. But as he rose, 
his face altered, and his voice rang out over the isle, 
“Sail ho!” 

All turned at the cry, and there, in the wild light 
of the morning, heading straight for Midway Reef, was 
the brig Flying Scud of Hull. 


CHAPTER XXIV 
A HARD BARGAIN 


HE ship which thus appeared before the cast- 
aways had long “tramped” the ocean, wandering 

from one port to another as freights offered. She was 
two years out from London, by the Cape of Good 
Hope, India, and the Archipelago; and now bound for 
San Francisco in the hope of working homeward round 
the Horn. Her captain was one Jacob Trent. He had 
retired some five years before to a suburban cottage, 
a patch of cabbages, a gig, and the conduct of what he 
called a Bank. The name appears to have been mis- 
leading. Borrowers were accustomed to choose works 
of art and utility in the front shop; loaves of sugar 
and bolts of broadcloth were deposited in pledge; and 
it was a part of the manager’s duty to dash in his gig 
on Saturday evenings from one small retailer’s to an- 
other, and to annex in each the bulk of the week’s 
takings. His was thus an active life, and to a man of 
the type of a rat, filled with recondite joys. An un- 
expected loss, a lawsuit, and the unintelligent com- 
mentary of the judge upon the bench, combined to 
disgust him of the business. I was so extraordinarily 
fortunate as to find, in an old newspaper, a report of 
the proceedings in Lyall v. The Cardiff Mutual Ac- 
commodation Banking Co. “TI confess I fail entirely to 
understand the nature of the business,” the judge had 
remarked, while Trent was being examined in chief; 
a little after, on fuller information—“They call it a 
bank,” he had opined, “but it seems to me to be an un- 
licensed pawnshop”; and he wound up with this 
appalling allocution: “Mr. Trent, I must put you on 
, your guard; you must be very careful or we shall see 

382 : 


A HARD BARGAIN 383 


you here again.” In the inside of a week the captain 
disposed of the bank, the cottage, and the gig and 
horse; and to sea again in the Flying Scud, where he 
did well and gave high satisfaction to his owners. But 
the glory clung to him: he was a plain sailor-man, he 
said, but he could never long allow you to forget that 
he had been a banker. 

His mate, Elias Goddedaal, was a huge viking of a 
man, six feet three and of proportionate mass, strong, 
sober, industrious, musical, and sentimental. He ran 
continually over into Swedish melodies, chiefly in the 
minor. He had paid nine dollars to hear Patti; to hear 
Nilsson, he had deserted a ship and two months’ 
wages; and he was ready at any time to walk ten miles 
for a good concert or seven to a reasonable play. On 
board he had three treasures: a canary bird, a con- 
certina, and a blinding copy of the works of Shake- 
speare. He had a gift, peculiarly Scandinavian, of 
making friends at sight: an elemental innocence com- 
mended him; he was without fear, without reproach, 
and without money or the hope of making it. 

Holdorsen was second mate, and berthed aft, but 
messed usually with the hands. 

Of one more of the crew, some image lives. This 
was a foremast hand out of the Clyde, of the name 
of Brown. A small, dark, thickset creature, with dog’s 
eyes, of a disposition incomparably mild and harmless, 
he knocked about seas and cities, the uncomplaining 
whiptop of one vice. “The drink is my trouble, ye 
see,’ he said to Carthew shyly; “and it’s the more 
shame to me because I’m come of very good people at 
Bowling, down the wa’er.” The letter that so much 
‘affected Nares, in case the reader should remember, 
was addressed to this man Brown. 

Such was the ship that now carried joy into the 
bosoms of the castaways. After the fatigue and the 
bestial emotions of their night of play, the approach 
of salvation shook them from all self-control. Their 
‘hands trembled, their eyes shone, they laughed and 


384 THE WRECKER 


shouted like children as they cleared their camp: and 
some one beginning to whistle Marching through 
Georgia, the remainder of the packing was conducted, 
amidst a thousand interruptions, to these martial 
strains. But the strong head of Wicks was only partly 
turned. 

“Boys,” he said, “easy all! We’re going aboard of 
a ship of which we don’t know nothing; we’ve got a 
chest of specie, and seeing the weight, we can’t turn 
to and deny it. Now, suppose she was fishy; suppose 
it was some kind of a Bully Hayes business! It’s my 
opinion we’d better be on hand with the pistols.” 

Every man of the party but Hemstead had some 
kind of a revolver; these were accordingly loaded and 
disposed about the persons of the castaways, and the 
packing was resumed and finished in the same rap- 
turous spirit as it was begun. The sun was not yet 
ten degrees above the eastern sea, but the brig was 
already close in and hove to, before they had launched 
the boat and sped, shouting at the oars, towards the 
passage. 

It was blowing fresh outside with a strong send of 
sea. The spray flew in the oarsmen’s faces. They saw 
the Union Jack blow aboard the Flying Scud, the men 
clustered at the rail, the cook in the galley-door, the 
captain on the quarter-deck with a pith helmet and 
binoculars. And the whole familiar business, the com- 
fort, company, and safety of a ship, heaving nearer at 
each stroke, maddened them with joy. 

Wicks was the first to catch the line, and swarm on 
board, helping hands grabbing him as he came and 
hauling him across the rail. 

“Captain, sir, I suppose?” he said, turning to the 
hard old man in the pith helmet. 

“Captain Trent, sir,” returned the old gentleman. 

“Well, I’m Captain Kirkup, and this is the crew of 
the Sydney schooner, Currency Lass, dismasted at sea, 

; January 28th.” 
“Ay, ay,” said Trent. “Well, yow’re all right now. 


A HARD BARGAIN 385 


Lucky for you I saw your signal. I didn’t know I was 
so near this beastly island, there must a drift to the 
south’ard; and when I came on deck this morning 
at eight bells, I thought it was a ship afire.” 

It had been agreed that, while Wicks was to board 
the ship and do the civil, the rest. were to remain in the 
whale-boat and see the treasure safe. A tackle was 
passed down to them; to this they made fast the in- 
valuable chest, and gave the word to heave. But the 
unexpected weight brought the hand at the tackle 
to a stand; two others ran to tail on and help him; and 
the thing caught the eye of Trent. 

“Vast heaving!” he cried sharply; and then to 
Wicks: ‘“What’s that? I don’t remember to have seen 
a chest weigh like that.” 

“It’s money,” said Wicks. 

“Tt’s what?” cried Trent. 

“Specie,” cried Wicks; “saved from the wreck.” 

Trent looked at him sharply. “Here, let go that 
chest again, Mr. Goddedaal,’”’ he commanded, “shove 
the boat off, and stream her with a line astern.” 

“Ay, ay, sir!” from Goddedaal. 

“What the devil’s wrong?” asked Wicks. 

“Nothing, I daresay,” returned Trent. “But you'll 
allow it’s a queer thing when a boat turns up in mid- 
ocean with half a ton of specie—and everybody 
armed,” he added, pointing to Wicks’s pocket. “Your 
boat will lay comfortably astern while you come below 
and make yourself satisfactory.” 

“O, if that’s all!” said Wicks. “My log and papers 
are as right as the mail; nothing fishy about us.” And 
he hailed his friends in the boat, bidding them have 
patience, and turned to follow Captain Trent. 

“This way, Captain Kirkup,” said the latter. “And 
don’t blame a man for too much caution; no offence 
intended; and these China rivers shake a fellow’s nerve. 
All I want is just to see you’re what you say you are; 
it’s only my duty, sir, and what you would do your- 
self in the circumstances. I’ve not always been a 


rd 


386 THE WRECKER 


ship-captain: I was a banker once, and I tell you 
that’s the trade to learn caution in. You have to keep 
your weather-eye lifting Saturday nights.” And with 
x dry, business-like cordiality, he produced-a bottle 
D1 p2iN.ot 

The captains pledged each other; the papers were 
overhauled; the tale of Topelius and the trade was told 
in appreciative ears and cemented their acquaintance. 
Trent’s suspicions, thus finally disposed of, were suc- 
ceeded by a fit of profound thought, during which 
he sat lethargic and stern, looking at and drumming 
on the table. 

“Anything more?” asked Wicks. 

“What sort of place is it inside?” inquired Trent, 
sudden as though Wicks had touched a spring. 

“Tt’s a good enough lagoon—a few horses’ heads, 
but nothing to mention,” answered Wicks. 

“Tye a good mind to go in,” said Trent. “I was 
new rigged in China; it’s given very bad, and I’m 
getting frightened for my sticks. We could set it up 
as good as new ina day. For I daresay your lot would 
turn to and give us a hand?” 

“You see if we don’t!” said Wicks. 

“So be it then,” concluded Trent. “A stitch in time 
saves nine.” 

They returned on deck; Wicks cried the news to the 
Currency Lasses; the foretopsail was filled again, and 
the brig ran into the lagoon lively, the whaleboat 
dancing in her wake, and came to single anchor off 
Middle Brooks Island before eight. She was boarded 
by the castaways, breakfast was served, the baggage 
slung on board and piled in the waist, and all hands 
turned to upon the rigging. All day the work con- 
tinued, the two crews rivalling each other in expenses of 
strength. Dinner was served on deck, the officers 
messing aft under the slack of the spanker, the men 
fraternising forward. Trent appeared in excellent 
spirits, served out grog to all hands, opened a bottle 
of Cape wine for the after-table, and obliged his guests 


A HARD BARGAIN 387 


with many details of the life of a financier in Cardiff. 
He had been forty years at sea, had five times suffered 
shipwreck, was once nine months the prisoner of a 
pepper rajah, and had seen service under fire in 
Chinese rivers; but the only thing he cared to talk of, 
the only thing of which he was vain, or with which he 
thought it possible to interest a stranger, was his career 
as a money-lender in the slums of a seaport town. 

The afternoon spell told cruelly on the Currency 
Lasses. Already exhausted as they were with sleep- 
lessness and excitement, they did the last hours of this 
violent employment on bare nerves; and when Trent 
was at last satisfied with the condition of his rigging, 
expected eagerly the word to put to sea. But the cap- 
tain seemed in no hurry. He went and walked by him- 
self softly, like a man in thought. Preséntly he hailed 
Wicks. 

“You’re a kind of company, ain’t you, Captain 
Kirkup?” he inquired. 

“Yes, we’re all on board on lays,” was the reply. 

“Well, then, you won’t mind if I ask the lot of you 
down to tea in the cabin?” asked Trent. 

Wicks was amazed, but he naturally ventured no 
remark; and a little after, the six Currency Lasses sat 
down with Trent and Goddedaal to a spread of marma- 
lade, butter, toast, sardines, tinned tongue, and steam- 
ing tea. The food was not very good, and I have no 
doubt Nares would have reviled it, but it was manna 
to the castaways. Goddedaal waited on them with a 
kindness far before courtesy, a kindness like that of 
some old, honest country-woman in her farm. It was 
remembered afterwards that Trent took little share in 
these attentions, but sat much absorbed in thought, 
and seemed to remember and forget the presence of 
his guests alternately. . 

Presently he addressed the Chinaman. 

“Clear out!” said he, and watched him till he had 
disappeared in the stair. ‘Now, gentlemen,” he went 
on, “I understand you're a joint-stock sort of crew, 


388 THE WRECKER 


and that’s why I’ve had you all down; for there’s a 
point I want made clear. You see what sort of a ship 
this is—a good ship, though I say it, and you see what 
the rations are—good enough for sailor-men.” 

There was a hurried murmur of approval, but curi- 
co for what was coming next prevented an articulate 
reply. 

“Well,” continued Trent, making bread pills and 
looking hard at the middle of the table, “I’m glad of 
course to be able to give you a passage to Frisco; one 
sailor-man should help another, that’s my motto. But 
when you want a thing in this world, you generally 
always have to pay for it.” He laughed a brief, joyless 
laugh. “I have no idea of losing by my kindness.” 

“We have no idea you should, Captain,” said Wicks. 

“We are ready to pay anything in reason,” added 
Carthew. 

At the words, Goddedaal, who sat next to him, 
touched him with his elbow, and the two mates ex- 
changed a significant look. The character of Captain 
Trent was given and taken in that silent second. 

“In reason?” repeated the captain of the brig. “TI 
was waiting for that. Reason’s between two people, 
and there’s only one here. I’m the judge; I’m reason. 
If you want an advance you have to pay for it’—he 
hastily corrected himself—‘Ifi you want a passage in 
my ship, you have to pay my price,” he substituted. 
“That’s business, I believe. I don’t want you; you 
want me.” | 

“Well, sir,” said Carthew, “and what 2s your price?” 

The captain made bread pills. “If I were like you,” 
he said, “when you got hold of that merchant in the 
Gilberts, I might surprise you. You had your chance 
then; seems to me it’s mine now. Turn about’s fair 
play. What kind of mercy did you have on that 
Gilbert merchant?” he cried, with a sudden stridency. 
“Not that I blame you. All’s fair in love and busi- 
ness,” and he laughed again, a little frosty giggle. 

“Well, sir?” said Carthew, gravely. 


A HARD BARGAIN 389 


“Well, this ship’s mine, I think?” he asked sharply. 
ee I’m of that way of thinking meself,” observed 

ac. 

“T say it’s mine, sir!’ reiterated Trent, like a man 
trying to be angry. ‘And I tell you all, if I was a 
driver like what you are, I would take the lot. But 
there’s two thousand pounds there that don’t belong 
to you, and I’m an honest man. Give me the two thou- 
sand that’s yours, and I’ll give you a passage to the 
coast, and land every man-jack of you in ’Frisco with 
fifteen pounds in his pocket, and the captain here with 
twenty-five.” 

Goddedaal laid down his head on the table like a 
man ashamed. 

“You're joking,” cried Wicks, purple in the face. 

“Am I?” said Trent. “Please yourselves. You're 
under no compulsion. ‘This ship’s mine, but there’s 
that Brooks Island don’t belong to me, and you can 
lay there till you die for what I care.” 

“Tt’s worth more than your blooming brig’s worth!” 
cried Wicks. 

“It’s my price anyway,” returned Trent. 

“And do you mean to say you would land us there 
to starve?” cried Tommy. 

Captain Trent laughed the third time. “Starve? I 
defy you to,” said he. “T’ll sell you all the provisions 
you want at a fair profit.” 

“T beg your pardon, sir,” said Mac, “but my case 
is by itself. I’m working me passage; I got no share 
in that two thousand pounds, nor nothing in my 
pockut; and I'll be glad to know what you have to say 
to me?” 

“T ain’t a hard man,” said Trent. “That shall make 
no difference. I’ll take you with the rest, only of course 
you get nc fifteen pound.” 

The impudence was so extreme and startling, that all 
breathed deep, and Goddedaal raised up his face and 
looked his superior sternly in the eye. 

But Mac was more articulate. “And you're what ye 


fr? 


390 THE WRECKER 


call a British sayman, I suppose? the sorrow in your 
guts!” he cried. 

“One more such word, and I clap you in irons!” said 
Trent, rising gleefully at the face of opposition. 

“And where would I be while you were doin’ ut?” 
asked Mac. “After you and your rigging, too! Ye 
ould puggy, ye haven’t the civility of a bug, and I'll 
learn ye some.” 

His voice did not even rise as he uttered the threat; 
no man present, Trent least of all, expected that which 
followed. The Irishman’s hand rose suddenly from 
below the table, an open clasp-knife balanced on the 
palm; there was a movement swift as conjuring; Trent 
started half to his feet, turned a little as he rose so as 
to escape the table, and the movement was his bane. 
The missile struck him in the jugular; he fell forward, 
and his blood flowed among the dishes on the cloth. 

The suddenness of the attack and the catastrophe, 
the instant change from peace to war and from life to 
death, held all men spellbound. Yet a moment they sat 
about the table staring open-mouthed upon the pros- 
trate captain and the flowing blood. The next, Godde- 
daal had leaped to his feet, caught up the stool on 
which he had been sitting, and swung it high in air, a 
man transfigured, roaring (as he stood) so that men’s 
ears were stunned with it. There was no thought of 
battle in the Currency Lasses; none drew his weapon; 
all huddled helplessly from before the face of the 
baresark Scandinavian. His first blow sent Mac to 
ground with a broken arm. His second dashed out the 
brains of Hemstead. He turned from one to another 
menacing and trumpeting like a wounded elephant, 
exulting in his rage. But there was no council, no light 
of reason, in that ecstasy of battle; and he shied from 
the pursuit of victory to hail fresh blows upon the 
supine Hemstead, so that the stool was shattered and 
the cabin rang with their violence. The sight of that 
post-mortem cruelty recalled Carthew to the life of 
instinct, and his revolver was in hand and he had 


A HARD BARGAIN 391 


aimed and fired before he knew. The ear-bursting 
sound of the report was accompanied by a yell of pain; 
the colossus paused, swayed, tottered, and fell head- 
long on the body of his victim. 

In the instant of silence that succeeded, the sound 
of feet pounding on the deck and in the companion 
leaped into hearing; and a face, that of the sailor 
Holdorsen, appeared below the bulkheads in the cabin 
doorway. Carthew shattered it with a second shot, for 
he was a marksman. 

“Pistols!” he cried, and charged at the companion, 
Wicks at his heel, Tommy and Amalu following. 
They trod the body of Holdorsen underfoot, and flew 
upstairs and forth into the dusky blaze of a sunset 
red as blood. The numbers were still,equal, but the 
Flying Scuds dreamed not of defence, and fled with 
one accord for the forecastle scuttle. Brown was first 
in flight; he disappeared below unscathed; the China- 
man followed headforemost with a ball in his side; and 
the others shinned into the rigging. 

A fierce composure settled upon Wicks and Carthew, 
their fighting second wind. They posted Tommy at the 
fore and Amalu at the main to guard the masts and 
shrouds, and going themselves into the waist, poured 
out a box of cartridges on deck and filled the chambers. 
The poor devils aloft bleated aloud for mercy. But 
the hour of any mercy was gone by; the cup was 
brewed and must be drunken to the dregs; since so 
many had fallen, all must fall. The light was bad, the 
cheap revolvers fouled and carried wild, the screaming 
wretches were swift to flatten themselves against the 
masts and yards or find a momentary refuge in the 
hanging sails. The fell business took long, but it was 
done at last. Hardy the Londoner was shot on the 
fore-royal yard, and hung horribly suspended in the 
brails. Wallen, the other, had his jaw broken on 
the maintop-gallant cross-trees, and exposed himself, 
shrieking, till a second shot dropped him on the deck. 

This had been bad enough, but worse remained 


392 THE WRECKER 


behind. There was still Brown in the forepeak. 
Tommy, with a sudden clamour of weeping, begged for 
his life. “One man can’t hurt us,’ he sobbed. “We 
can’t go on with this. I spoke to him at dinner. He’s 
an awful decent little cad. It can’t be done. Nobody 
can go into that place and murder him. It’s too 
damned wicked.” 

The sound of his supplications was perhaps audible 
to the unfortunate below. 

“One left and we all hang,” said Wicks. “Brown 
must go the same. road.” The big man was deadly 
white and trembled like an aspen; and he had no sooner 
finished speaking, than he went to the ship’s side and 
vomited. 

“We can never do it if we wait,” said Carthew. 
“Now or never,” and he marched towards the scuttle. 
“No, no, no!” wailed Tommy, clutching at his jacket. 

But Carthew flung him off, and stepped down the 
ladder, his heart rising with disgust and shame. The 
Chinaman lay on the floor, still groaning; the place 
was pitch dark. 

“Brown!” cried Carthew, “Brown, where are you?” 

His heart smote him for the treacherous apostrophe, 
but no answer came. 

He groped in the bunks: they were all empty. Then 
he moved towards the forepeak, which was hampered 
with coils of rope and spare chandlery in general. 

“Brown!” he said again. 

“Here, sir,” answered a shaking voice; and the poor 
invisible caitiff called on him by name, and poured 
forth out of the darkness an endless, garrulous appeal 
for mercy. A sense of danger, of daring, had alone 
nerved Carthew to enter the forecastle; and here was 
the enemy crying and pleading like a frightened child. 
His obsequious “Here, sir,” his horrid fluency of ob- 
testation, made the murder tenfold more revolting. 
Twice Carthew raised the pistol, once he pressed 
the trigger (or thought he did) with all his might, but 
no explosion followed; and with that the lees of his 


A HARD BARGAIN 393 


courage ran quite out, and he turned and fled from 
before his victim. 

Wicks sat on the fore hatch, raised the face of a man 
of seventy, and looked a wordless question. Carthew 
shook his head. With such composure as a man dis- 
plays marching towards the gallows, Wicks arose, 
walked to the scuttle, and went down. Brown thought 
it was Carthew returning, and discovered himself, half 
crawling from his shelter, with another incoherent burst 
of pleading. Wicks emptied his revolver at the voice, 
which broke into mouse-like whimperings and groans. 
Silence succeeded, and the murderer ran on deck like 
one possessed. 

The other three now all gathered on the fore hatch, 
and Wicks took his place beside them‘ without ques- 
tion asked or answered. They sat close, like children 
in the dark, and shook each other with their shaking. 
The dusk continued to fall; and there was no sound 
but the beating of the surf and the occasional hiccup 
of a sob from Tommy Hadden. 

“God, if there was another ship!” cried Carthew of 
a sudden. 

Wicks started and looked aloft with the trick of all 
seamen, and shuddered as he saw the hanging figure on 
the royal yard. 

“Tf I went aloft, I’d fall,” he said simply. “I’m done 
up.” 

It was Amalu who volunteered, climbed to the very 
truck, swept the fading horizon, and announced nothing 
within sight. 

“No odds,” said Wicks. “We can’t sleep .. .” 

“Sleep !” echoed Carthew; and it seemed as if the 
whole of Shakespeare’s WZ acbeth thundered at the oal- 
lop through his mind. 

“Well, then, we can sit and chitter here,” said Wicks, 
“till we’ve cleaned ship; and I can’t turn to till I’ve 
had gin, and the gin’s in the cabin, and who’s to 
fetch it?” 

“T will,” said Carthew, “if any one has matches.” 


304 THE WRECKER 


Amalu passed him a box, and he went aft and down 
the companion and into the cabin, stumbling upon 
bodies. Then he struck a match, and his looks fell 
upon two living eyes. 

“Well?” asked Mace, for it was he who still survived 
in that shambles of a cabin. 

“Tt’s done; they’re all dead,” answered Carthew. 

“Christ!” said the Irishman, and fainted. 

The gin was found in the dead captain’s cabin; it was 
brought back on deck, and all hands had a dram, and 
attacked their farther task. The night was come, the 
moon would not be up for hours; a lamp was set on the 
main hatch to ight Amalu as he washed down decks; 
and the galley lantern was taken to guide the others in 
their graveyard business. Holdorsen, Hemstead, Trent, 
and Goddedaal were first disposed of, the last still 
breathing as he went over the side; Wallen followed, 
and then Wicks, steadied by the gin, went aloft with a 
boat-hook and succeeded in dislodging Hardy. The 
Chinaman was their last task; he seemed to be light- 
headed, talked aloud in his unknown language as they 
brought him up, and it was only with the splash of his 
sinking body that the gibberish ceased. Brown, by 
common consent, was left alone. Flesh and blood could 
go no farther. 

All this time they had been drinking undiluted gin 
like water; three bottles stood broached in different 
quarters; and none passed without a gulp. Tommy 
collapsed against the mainmast; Wicks fell on his face 
on the poop ladder and moved no more; Amalu had 
vanished unobserved. Carthew was the last afoot: he 
stood swaying at the break of the poop, and the 
lantern, which he still carried, swung with his move- 
ment. His head hummed; it swarmed with broken 
thoughts; memory of that day’s abominations flared up 
and died down within him, like the light of a lamp in 
a strong draught. And then he had a drunkard’s 
inspiration. 


A HARD BARGAIN 395 


“There must be no more of this,’ he thought, and 
stumbled once more below. : 

The absence of Holdorsen’s body brought him to a 
stand. He stood and stared at the empty floor, and 
then remembered and smiled. From the eaptain’s room 
he took the open case with one dozen and three bottles 
of gin, put the lantern inside, and walked precariously 
forth. Mac was once more conscious; his eyes haggard, 
his face drawn with pain and flushed with fever; and 
_ Carthew remembered he had never been seen to, had 
lain there helpless, and was so to lie all night, injured, 
perhaps dying. But it was now too late; reason had 
now fled from that silent ship. If Carthew could get 
on deck again, it was as much as he could hope; and 
casting on the unfortunate a glance of pity, the tragic 
drunkard shouldered his way up the companion, 
dropped the case overboard, and fell in the scuppers 
helpless. 


CHAPTER XXV 
A BAD BARGAIN 


ITH the first colour in the east, Carthew awoke 
and sat up. A while he gazed at the scroll of . 
the morning bank and the spars and hanging canyas 
of the brig, like a man who awakes in a strange bed, 
with a child’s simplicity of wonder. He wonderéd 
above all what ailed him, what he had lost, what dis- 
favour had been done him, which he knew he should 
resent, yet had forgotten. And then, like a river burst- 
ing through a dam, the truth rolled on him its in- 
stantaneous volume: his memory teemed with speech 
and pictures that he should never again forget; and he 
sprang to his feet, stood a moment hand to brow, and 
began to walk violently to and fro by the companion, 
As he walked, he wrung his hands. “God—God— 
God,” he kept saying, with no thought of prayer, utter- 
ing a mere voice of agony. 

The time may have been long or short, it was per- 
haps minutes, perhaps only seconds, ere he awoke to 
find himself observed, and saw the captain sitting up 
and watching him over the break of the poop, a strange 
blindness as of fever in his eyes, a haggard knot of cor- 
rugations on his brow. Cain saw himself in a mirror. 
For a flash they looked upon each other, and then 
glanced guiltily aside; and Carthew fled from the eye — 
of his accomplice, and stood leaning on the taffrail. 

_ An hour went by, while the day came brighter, and 

the sun rose and drank up the clouds: an hour of 

silence in the ship, an hour of agony beyond narration 

for the sufferers. Brown’s gabbling prayers, the cries 

of the sailors in the rigging, strains of the dead Hem- 

stead’s minstrelsy, ran together in Carthew’s mind, 
396 


A BAD BARGAIN 397 


with sickening iteration. He neither acquitted nor 
condemned himself: he did not think, he suffered. In 
the bright water into which he stared, the pictures 
changed and were repeated: the baresark rage of 
Goddedaal; the blood-red light of the sunset into which 
they had run forth; the face of the babbling Chinaman 
as they cast him over; the face of the captain, seen a 
moment since, as he awoke from drunkenness into re- 
morse. And time passed, and the sun swam higher, and 
his torment was not abated. 

Then were fulfilled many sayings, and the weakest 
of these condemned brought relief and healing to the 
others. Amalu the drudge awoke (like the rest) to 
sickness of body and distress of mind; but the habit 
of obedience ruled in that simple spirit, and, appalled 
to be so late, he went direct into the galley, kindled the 
fire and began to get breakfast. At the rattle of 
dishes, the snapping of the fire, and the thin smoke 
that went up straight into the air, the spell was lifted. 
The condemned felt once more the good dry land of 
habit under foot; they touched again the familiar 
guide-ropes of sanity; they were restored to a sense of 
the blessed revolution and return of all things earthly. 
The captain drew a bucket of water and began to 
bathe. Tommy sat up, watched him a while, and 
slowly followed his example; and Carthew, remember- 
ing his last thoughts of the night before, hastened to 
the cabin. 

Mac was awake; perhaps had not slept. Over his 
head Goddedaal’s canary twittered shrilly from its 
cage. 

“How are you?” asked Carthew. 

“Me arrum’s broke,” returned Mac; “but I can 
stand that. It’s this place I can’t abide. I was coming 
on deck anyway.” 

“Stay where you are, though,” said Carthew. “It’s 
deadly hot above and there’s no wind. IT’ll wash out 
this——” and he paused, seeking a word and not find- 
ing one for the grisly foulness of the cabin. 


398 THE WRECKER 


“Faith, I'll be obliged to ye, then,” replied the Irish- 
man. He spoke mild and meek, like a sick child with 
its mother. There was now no violence in the violent 
man; and as Carthew fetched a bucket and swab and 
the steward’s sponge, and began to cleanse the field of 
battle, he alternately watched him or shut his eyes and 
sighed like a man near fainting. “I have to ask all 
your pardons,” he began again presently, ‘“‘and the more 
shame to me as I got ye into the trouble, and couldn’t 
do nothing when it came. Ye saved me life, sir; ye’re a 
clane shot.” 

“For God’s sake, don’t talk of it!” cried Carthew. 
“Tt can’t be talked of; you don’t know what it was. It 
was nothing down here; they fought. On deck—O, my 
God!” And Carthew, with the bloody sponge pressed 
to his face, struggled a moment with hysteria. 

“Kape cool, Mr. Cart’ew. It’s done now,” said Mac; 
“and ye may bless God ye’re not in pain and helpless 
in the bargain.” 

There was no more said by one or other, and the 
cabin was pretty well cleansed when a stroke on the 
ship’s bell summoned Carthew to breakfast. Tommy 
had been busy in the meanwhile; he had hauled the 
whaleboat close aboard, and already lowered into it a 
small keg of beef that he found ready broached be- 
side the galley-door; it was plain he had but the one 
idea—to escape. 

“We have a shipful of stores to draw upon,” he said. 
“Well, what are we staying for? Let’s get off at once 
for Hawaii. I’ve begun preparing already.” 

“Mac had his arm broken,” observed Carthew; “how 
would he stand the voyage?” 

“A broken arm?” repeated the captain. “That all? 
Tl set it after breakfast. I thought he was dead like 
the rest. The madman hit out like ” and there, at 
the evocation of the battle, his voice ceased and the 
talk died with it. 

After breakfast the three white men went down into 
the cabin. 








A BAD BARGAIN 399 


“T’ve come to set your arm,” said the captain. 

“T beg your pardon, Captain,” ’ replied Mac; “but 
the firrst thing ye got to do is to get this ship to sea. 
We'll talk of me arrum after that.” 

“O, there’s no such blooming hurry,” returned Wicks. 

“When the next ship sails in, ye’ll tell me stories!” 
retorted Mac. 

“But there’s nothing so unlikely in the world,” ob- 
jected Carthew. 

“Don’t be deceivin’ yourself,” said Mac. “If ye 
want a ship, divil a one’ll look near ye in six year; but 
if ye don’t, ye may take my word for ut, we'll have 
a squadron layin’ here.” 

“That’s what I say,” cried Tommy; “that’s what I 
call sense! Let’s stock that whaleboat and be off.” 

_ “And what will Captain Wicks be thinking of the 
whaleboat?” asked the Irishman. 

“T don’t think of it at all,” said Wicks. “We’ve a 
smart-looking brig under foot; that’s all the whaleboat 
I want.” 

“Excuse me!” cried Tommy. ‘“That’s childish talk. 
You’ve got a brig, to be sure, and what use is she? 
You daren’t go anywhere in her. What port are you 
. tassail for??? 

“For the port of Davy Jones’s Locker, my son,” 
replied the captain. ‘This brig’s going to be lost at 
sea. I'll tell you where, too, and that’s about forty 
miles to windward of Kauai. We're going to stay by 
her till she’s down; and once the masts are under, she’s 
the Flying Scud no more, and we never heard of such 
a brig; and it’s the crew of the schooner Currency Lass 
that comes ashore in the boat, and takes the first 
chance to Sydney.” 

“Captain dear, that’s the first Christian word I’ve 
heard of ut!” cried Mac. “And now, just let me arrum 
be, jewel, and get the brig outside.” 

“T’m as anxious as yourself, Mac,” returned Wicks; 
“but there’s not wind enough to swear by. So let’s see 
your arm, and no more talk.” 


400 THE WRECKER 


The arm was set and splinted; the body of Brown 
fetched from the forepeak, where it lay stiff and cold, 
and committed to the waters of the lagoon; and the 
washing of the cabin rudely finished. All these were 
done ere midday; and it was past three when the first 
cat’s-paw ruffled the lagoon and the wind came in a dry 
squall, which presently sobered to a steady breeze. 

The interval was passed by all in feverish impatience 
and by one of the party in secret and extreme concern 
of mind. Captain Wicks was a fore-and-aft sailor; he 
could take a schooner through a Scotch reel, felt her 
mouth and divined her temper like a rider with a 
horse; she, on her side, recognising her master and fol- 
lowing his wishes like a dog. But by a not very un- 
usual train of circumstance, the man’s dexterity was 
partial and circumscribed. On the schooner’s deck he 
was Rembrandt or (at the least) Mr. Whistler; on 
board a brig he was Pierre Grassou. Again and again 
in the course of the morning, he had reasoned out his 
policy and rehearsed his orders; and ever with the 
same depression and weariness. It was guess-work; 
it was chance; the ship might behave as he expected, 
and might not; suppose she failed him, he stood there 
helpless, beggared of all the proved resources of ex- 
perience. Had not all hands been so weary, had he 
not feared to communicate his own misgivings, he 
could have towed her out. But these reasons sufficed, 
and the most he could do was to take all possible pre- 
cautions. Accordingly he had Carthew aft, explained 
what was to be done with anxious patience, and visited 
along with him the various sheets and braces. 

“T hope Ill remember,” said Carthew. “It seems 
awfully muddled.” 

“Tt’s the rottenest kind of rig,” the captain admitted: 
“all blooming pocket handkerchiefs! And not one 
sailor-man on deck! Ah, if she’d only been a brigan- 
tine, now! But it’s lucky the passage is so plain; 
there’s no manceuvring to mention. We get under way 
before the wind, and run right so till we begin to get 


A BAD BARGAIN 401 


foul of the island; then we haul our wind and lie as 
near south-east as may be till we’re on that line; ’bout 
ship there and stand straight out on the port tack. 
Catch the idea?” 

“Yes, I see the idea,” replied Carthew rather dis- 
mally, and the two incompetents studied for a long 
time in silence the complicated gear above their heads. 

But the time came when these rehearsals must be 
put in practice. The sails were lowered, and all hands 
heaved the anchor short. The whaleboat was then 
cut adrift, the upper topsails and the spanker set, the 
yards braced up, and the spanker sheet hauled out to 
starboard. | 

“Heave away on your anchor, Mr. Carthew.” 

“Anchor’s gone, sir.” 

“Set jibs.” 

It was done, and the brig still hung enchanted. 
Wicks, his head full of a schooner’s mainsail, turned 
his mind to the spanker. First he hauled in the sheet, 
and then he hauled it out with no result. 

“Brail the damned thing up!” he bawled at last, 
with a red face. “There ain’t no sense in it.” 

It was the last stroke of bewilderment for the poor 
captain, that he had no sooner brailed up the spanker, 
than the brig came before the wind. The laws of 
nature seemed to him to be suspended; he was like a 
man in a world of pantomime tricks; the cause of any 
result, and the probable result of any action, equally 
concealed from him. He was the more careful not to 
shake the nerve of his amateur assistants. He stood 
there with a face like a torch; but he gave his orders 
with aplomb; and indeed, now the ship was under way, 
supposed his difficulties over. 

The lower topsails and courses were then set, and the 
brig began to walk the water like a thing of life, her 
forefoot discoursing music, the birds flying and crying 
over her spars. Bit by bit the passage began to open 
and the blue sea to show between the flanking breakers 
on the reef; bit by bit, on the starboard bow, the low 


402 THE WRECKER 


land of the islet began to heave closer aboard. ‘The 
yards were braced up, the spanker sheet hauled aft 
again; the brig was close hauled, lay down to her work 
like a thing in earnest, and had soon drawn near to 
the point of advantage, where she might stay and lie 
out of the lagoon in a single tack. 

Wicks took the wheel himself swelling with success. 
He kept the brig full to give her heels, and began to 
bark his orders: “Ready about. Helm’s a-lee. Tacks 
and sheets. Mainsail haul.” And then the fatal 
words: “That’ll do your mainsail; jump forrard and 
haul round your foreyards.” 

To stay a square-rigged ship is an affair of knowl- 
edge and swift sight; and a man used to the succinct 
evolutions of a schooner will always tend to be too 
hasty with a brig. It was so now. The order came 
too soon; the topsails set flat aback; the ship was in 
irons. Even yet, had the helm been reversed, they 
might have saved her. But to think of a stern-board 
at all, far more to think of profiting by one, were for- 
eign to the schooner-sailor’s mind. Wicks made haste 
instead to wear ship, a manceuvre for which room was 
wanting, and the Flying Scud took ground on a bank 
of sand and coral about twenty minutes before five. 

Wicks was no hand with a square-rigger, and he had 
shown it. But he was a sailor and a born captain of 
men for all homely purposes, where intellect is not 
required and an eye in a man’s head and a heart under 
his jacket will suffice: Before the others had time to 
understand the misfortune, he was bawling fresh 
orders, and had the sails clewed up, and took soundings 
round the ship. 

“She lies lovely,’ he remarked, and ordered out a 
boat with the starboard anchor. 

“Here! steady!” cried Tommy. “You ain’t going 
to turn us to, to warp her off?” 

“T am though,” replied Wicks. 

“I won't set a hand to such tomfoolery for one,” re- 
phed Tommy. “I’m dead beat.” He went and sat 


A BAD BARGAIN 403 


down doggedly on the main hatch. “You got us on; 
get us off again,” he added. 

Carthew and Wicks turned to each other, 

“Perhaps you don’t know how tired we are,” said 
Carthew. 

“The tide’s flowing!” cried the captain. “You 
wouldn’t have me miss a rising tide?” 

“O gammon! there’s tides to-morrow!” retorted 
Tommy. 

And I'll tell you what,” added Carthew, “the breeze 
is failing fast, and the sun will soon be down. We may 
get into all anda of fresh mess in the dark and with 
nothing but light airs.” 

“T don’t deny it,” paaeictied Wicks, and stood a 
while as if in thought. “But what I tan’t make out,” 
he began again, with agitation, “what I can’t make out 
is what you’re made of! To stay in this place is be- 
yond me. There’s the bloody sun going down—and to 
stay here is beyond me!” 

The others looked upon him with horrified surprise. 
This fall of their chief pillar—this irrational passion in 
the practical man, suddenly barred out of his true 
sphere, the sphere of action—shocked and daunted 
them. But it gave to another and unseen hearer the 
chance for which he had been waiting. Mac, on the 
striking of the brig, had crawled up the companion, 
and he now showed himself and spoke up. 

“Captain Wicks,” he said, “it’s me that brought this 
trouble on the lot of ye. Tm sorry for ut, I ask all 
your pardons, and if there’s any one can say ‘I forgive 
ye, it'll make my soul the lighter.” 

Wicks stared upon the man in amaze; then his self- 
control returned to him. “We're all in glass houses 
here,” he said; “we ain’t going to turn to and throw 
stones. I forgive you, sure enough; and much good 
may it do you!” 

The others spoke to the same purpose. 

“TI thank ye for ut, and ’tis done like gentlemen,” 





404 THE WRECKER | 


said Mac. “But there’s another thing I have upon my ~ 
mind. I hope we're all Prodestans here?” 

It happened they were; it seemed a small thing for 
the Protestant religion to rejoice in! 

“Well, that’s as it should be,” continued Mac, “And 
why shouldn’t we say the Lord’s Prayer? There can’t 
be no hurt in ut.” | 

He had the same quiet, pleading, childlike way with 
him as in the morning; and the others accepted his 
proposal, and knelt down without a word. 

“Knale if ye like!” said he. “I stand.” And he 
covered his eyes. 

So the prayer was said to the accompaniment of the 
surf and sea-birds, and all rose refreshed and felt light- 
ened of a load. Up to then, they had cherished their 
guilty memories in private, or only referred to them 
in the heat of a moment and failen immediately silent. 
Now they had faced their remorse in company, and the 
worst seemed over. Nor was it only that. But the 
petition “Forgive us our trespasses,” falling in so ap- 
posite after they had themselves forgiven the im- 
mediate author of their miseries, sounded like an 
absolution. 

Tea was taken on deck in the time of the sunset, and 
not long after the five castaways—castaways once 
more—lay down to sleep. 

Day dawned windless and hot. Their slumbers had 
been too profound to be refreshing, and they woke 
listless, and sat up, and stared about them with dull 
eyes. Only Wicks, smelling a hard day’s work ahead, 
was more alert. He went first to the well, sounded it 
once and then a second time, and stood a while with 
a grim look, so that all could see he was dissatisfied. 
Then he shook himself, stripped to the buff, clambered 
on the rail, drew himself up and raised his arms to 
plunge. The dive was never taken. He stood instead 
transfixed, his eyes on the horizon, 

“Hand up that glass,” he said. 





A BAD BARGAIN 405 


In a trice they were all swarming aloft, the nude cap- 
tain leading with the glass. 

On the northern horizon was a finger of grey smoke, 
straight in the windless air like a point of admiration. 

“What do you make it?” they asked of Wicks. 

“She’s truck down,” he replied; “no telling yet. 
BY the way the smoke builds, she must be heading right 

ere. 

“What can she be?” 

“She might be the China mail,” returned Wicks, “and 
she might be a blooming man-of-war, come to look for 
castaways. Here! This ain’t the time to stand star- 
ing. On deck—boys!” 

He was the first on deck, as he had been the first 
aloft, handed down the ensign, bent it again to the 
signal halliards, and ran it up union down. 

“Now hear me,” he said, jumping into his trousers, 
“and everything I say you grip on to. If that’s a man- 
of-war, she'll be in a tearing hurry; all these ships are 
what don’t do nothing and have their expenses paid. 
That’s our chance; for we'll go with them, and they 
won’t take the time to look twice or to ask a question. 
I’m Captain Trent; Carthew, you’re Goddedaal; 
Tommy, youre Hardy; Mac’s Brown; Amalu—Hold 
hard! we can’t make a Chinaman of him! Ah Wing 
must have deserted; Amalu stowed away; and I turned 
him to as cook, and was never at the bother to sign 
him. Catch the idea? Say your names.” 

And that pale company recited their lesson earnestly. 

“What were the names of the other two?” he asked. 
“Him Carthew shot in the companion, and the one I 
caught in the jaw on the main top-gallant?” 

“Holdorsen and Wallen,” said some one. 

‘Well, they’re drowned,” continued Wicks; “drowned 
alongside trying to lower a boat. We had a bit of a 
squall last night: that’s how we got ashore.” He 
ran and squinted at the compass. “Squall out of nor’- 
nor’-west-half-west; blew hard; every one In a mess, 
falls jammed, and Holdorsen and Wallen spilt 


406 THE WRECKER, 


overboard. See? Clear your blooming heads!” He was 
in his jacket now, and spoke with a feverish impatience 
and contention that rang like anger. 

“But is it safe?” asked Tommy. 

“Safe?” bellowed the captain. ‘We're standing on 
the drop, you moon-calf! If that ship’s bound for 
China (which she don’t look to be), we’re lost as soon 
as we arrive; if she’s bound the other way, she comes 
from China, don’t she? Well, if there’s a man on 
board of her that ever clapped eyes on Trent or any 
blooming hand out of this brig, we’ll all be in irons in 
two hours. Safe! no, it ain’t safe! it’s a beggarly last 
chance to shave the gallows, and that’s what it is.” 

At this convincing picture, fear took hold on all. 

“Hadn’t we a hundred times better stay by the 
brig?” cried Carthew. ‘They would give us a hand to 
float her off.” 

“You'll make me waste this holy day in chattering!” 
cried Wicks. “Look here, when I sounded the well 
this morning, there was two foot of water there against 
eight inches last night. What’s wrong? I don’t know; 
might be nothing; might be the worst kind of smash. 
And then, there we are in for a thousand miles in an 
open boat, if that’s your taste!” 

“But it may be nothing, and anyway their carpenters 
are bound to help us repair her,” argued Carthew. 

“Moses Murphy!” cried the captain. “How did 
she strike? Bows on, I believe. And she’s down by 
_ the head now. If any carpenter comes tinkering here, 
where’ll he go first? Down in the forepeak, I sup- 
pose! And then, how about all that blood among the 
chandlery? You would think you were a lot of mem- 
bers of Parliament discussing Plimsoll; and you're just 
a pack of murderers with the halter round your neck. 
Any other ass got any time to waste? No? Thank 
God for that! Now, all hands! I’m going below, and 
I leave you here on deck. You get the boat-cover off 
that boat; then you turn to and open the specie chest. 
There are five of us; get five chests, and divide the 


A BAD BARGAIN 407 


specie equal among the five—put it at the bottom—and 
go at it like tigers. Get blankets, or canvas, or clothes, 
so it won’t rattle. It’ll make five pretty heavy chests, 
but we can’t help that. You, Carthew dash me!—You, 
Mr. Goddedaal, come below. We’ve our share before 
us.” 

And he cast another glance at the smoke, and hurried 
below with Carthew at his heels. 

The logs were found in the main cabin behind the 
canary’s cage; two of them, one kept by Trent, one by 
Goddedaal. Wicks looked first at one, then at the 
other, and his lips stuck out. 

“Can you forge hand of write?” he asked. 

“No,” said Carthew. 

“There’s luck for you—no more can I!” cried the 
captain. ‘Hullo! here’s worse yet, here’s this Godde- 
daal up to date; he must have filled it in before supper. 
See for yourself: ‘Smoke observed.—Captain Kirkup 
and five hands of the schooner Currency Lass.’ Ah! 
this is better,” he added, turning to the other log. 
“The old man ain’t written anything for a clear fort- 
night. We'll dispose of your log altogether, Mr. 
Goddedaal, and stick to the old man’s—to mine, I 
mean; only I ain’t going to write it up, for reasons 
of my own. You are. You're going to sit down right 
here and fill it in the way I tell you.” 

“How to explain the loss of mine?” asked Carthew. 

“You never kept one,” replied the captain. ‘Gross 
neglect of duty. You’ll catch it.” 

“And the change of writing?” resumed Carthew. 
“You began; why do you stop and why do I come in? 
And you'll have to sign anyway.” 

“O! Tve met with an accident and can’t write,” 
replied Wicks. 

“An accident?” repeated Carthew. “It don’t sound 
natural. What kind of an accident?” 

Wicks spread his hand face-up on the table, and 
drove a knife through his palm. 

“That kind of an accident,’ said he. ‘There’s a 


408 THE WRECKER 


way to draw to windward of most difficulties, if you’ve 
a head on your shoulders.” He began to bind up his 
hand with a handkerchief, glancing the while over 
Goddedaal’s log. ‘Hullo!” he said, ‘“this’ll never do 
for us—this is an impossible kind of a yarn. Here, to 
begin with, is this Captain Trent trying some fancy 
course, leastways he’s a thousand miles to south’ard of 
the great circle. And here, it seems, he was close up 
with this island on the sixth, sails all these days, and 
is close up with it again by daylight on the eleventh.” 

“Goddedaal said they had the deuce’s luck,” said 
Carthew. 

“Well, it don’t look like real life—that’s all I can 
say,” returned Wicks. 

“Tt’s the way it was, though,” argued Carthew. 

“So it is; and what the better are we for that, if it 
don’t look so?” cried the captain, sounding unwonted 
depths of art criticism. ‘Here! try and see if you can’t 
tie this bandage; I’m bleeding like. a pig.” 

As Carthew sought to adjust the handkerchief, his 
patient seemed sunk in a deep muse, his eye veiled, his 
mouth partly open. The job was scarce done, when 
he sprang to his feet. 

“T have it,” he broke out, and ran on deck, “Here, 
boys!” he cried, “we didn’t come here on the eleventh; 
we came in here on the evening of the sixth, and lay 
here ever since becalmed. As soon as you're done with 
these chests,” he added, “you can turn to and roll out 
beef and water breakers; it’ll look more shipshape— 
like as if we were getting ready for the boat voyage.” 

And he was back again in a moment, cooking the 
new log. Goddedaal’s was then carefully destroyed, 
and a hunt began for the ship’s papers. Of all the 
agonies of that breathless morning, this was perhaps 
the most poignant. Here and there the two men 
searched, cursing, cannoning together, streaming with 
heat, freezing with terror. News was bawled down to 
them that the ship was indeed a man-of-war, that she 
was close up, that she was lowering a boat; and still 


4 


A BAD BARGAIN 409 


they sought in vain. By what accident they missed 
the iron box with the money and accounts is hard to 
fancy; but they did. And the vital documents were 
found at last in the pocket of Trent’s shore-going coat, 
where he had left them when last he came on board. 

Wicks smiled for the first time that morning. “None 
too soon,’ said he. “And now for it! Take these 
‘lavage for me; I’m afraid I’ll get them mixed if I keep 

oth.” 

“What are they?” Carthew asked. 

“They’re the Kirkup and Currency Lass papers,” he 
replied. “Pray God we need ’em again!” 

“Boat’s inside the lagoon, sir,” hailed down Mac, who 
sat by the skylight doing sentry while the others 
worked. 

“Time we were on deck, then, Mr. Goddedaal,” said 
Wicks. 

As they turned to leave the cabin, the canary burst 
into piercing song. 

“My God!” cried Carthew, with a gulp, “we can’t 
leave that wretched bird to starve. It was poor Godde- 
daal’s.” | 

“Bring the bally thing along!” cried the captain. 

And they went on deck. 

An ugly brute of a modern man-of-war lay just 
without the reef, now quite inert, now giving a flap 
or two with her propeller. Nearer hand, and just with- 
in, a big white boat came skimming to the stroke of 
many oars, her ensign blowing at the stern. 

“One word more,” said Wicks, after he had taken in 
the scene. ‘Mac, you’ve been in China ports? All 
right; then you can speak for yourself. The rest of 
you I kept on board all the time we were in Hong 
Kong, hoping you would desert; but you fooled me and 
stuck to the brig. That’ll make your lying come 
easier.” 

The boat was now close at hand; a boy in the stern 
sheets was the only officer, and a poor one plainly, for 
the men were talking as they pulled. 


410 THE WRECKER 


“Thank God, they’ve only sent a kind of a middy!” 
ejaculated Wicks. ‘Here you, Hardy, stand for’ard! 
I'll have no deck hands on my quarter-deck,” he cried, 
and the reproof braced the whole crew like a cold 
douche. _ 

The boat came alongside with perfect neatness, and 
the boy officer stepped on board, where he was respect- 
fully greeted by Wicks. 

“You the master of this ship?” he asked. 

“Yes, sir,” said Wicks. “Trent is my name, and this 
is the Flying Scud of Hull.” 

“You seem to have got into a mess,” said the officer. 

“If you'll step aft with me here, I’ll tell you all there 
is of it,’ said Wicks. 

“Why, man, you’re shaking!” cried the officer. 

“So would you, perhaps, if you had been in the same 
berth,” returned Wicks; and he told the whole story of 
the rotten water, the long calm, the squall, the seamen 
drowned; glibly and hotly; talking, with his head in 
the lion’s mouth, like one pleading in the dock. I 
heard the same tale from the same narrator in the 
saloon in San Francisco; and even then his bearing 
filled me with suspicion. But the officer was no ob- 
server. 

“Well, the captain is in no end of a hurry,” said he; 
“but I was instructed to give you all the assistance in 
my power, and signal back for another boat if more 
hands were necessary. What can I do for you?” 

“O, we won’t keep you no time,” replied Wicks, 
cheerily. “We're all ready, bless you—men’s chests, 
chronometer, papers, and all.” 

“Do you mean to leave her?” cried the officer. ‘She 
seems to me to lie nicely; can’t we get your ship off?” 

“So we could, and no mistake; but how we’re to keep 
her afloat’s another question. Her bows is stove in,” 
replied Wicks. 

The officer coloured to the eyes. He was incom- 
petent and knew he was; thought he was already de- 
tected, and feared to expose himself again, There was 


A BAD BARGAIN 411 


nothing further from his mind than that the captain 
should deceive him; if the captain was pleased, why, 
so was he. “All right,” he said. “Tell your men to 
get their chests aboard.” 

“Mr. Goddedaal, turn the hands to get the chests 
aboard,” said Wicks. 

The four Currency Lasses had waited the while on 
tenter-hooks. This welcome news broke upon them 
like the sun at midnight; and Hadden burst into a 
storm of tears, sobbing aloud as he heaved upon the 
tackle. But the work went none the less briskly for- 
ward; chests, men, and bundles were got over the side ~ 
with alacrity; the boat was shoved off; it moved out 
of the long shadow of the Flying Scud, and its bows 
were pointed at the passage. 

So much, then, was accomplished. The sham wreck 
had passed muster; they were clear of her, they were 
safe away; and the water widened between them and 
her damning evidences. On the other hand, they were 
drawing nearer to the ship of war, which might very 
well prove to be their prison and a hangman’s cart 
to bear them to the gallows—of which they had not 
yet learned either whence she came or whither she was 
bound; and the doubt weighed upon their hearts like 
mountains. 

It was Wicks who did the talking. The sound was 
small in Carthew’s ears, like the voice of men miles 
away, but the meaning of each word struck home to 
him like a bullet. “What did you say your ship was?” 
inquired Wicks. 

“Tempest, don’t you know?” returned the officer. 

Don’t you know? What could that mean? Perhaps 
nothing: perhaps that the ships had met already. 
Wicks took his courage in both hands. “Where is she 
bound?” he asked. 

“O, we’re just looking in all these miserable islands 
here,’ said the officer. “Then we bear up for San 
Francisco.” 


412 THE WRECKER 


“O, yes, you’re from China ways, like us?” pursued — 


Wicks. 


7 


“Hong Kong,” said the officer, and spat over the side. | 
Hong Kong. Then the game was up; as soon as they 


set foot on board, they would be seized; the wreck 
would be examined, the blood found, the lagoon per- 
haps dredged, and the bodies of the dead would reap- 
pear to testify. An impulse almost incontrollable 
bade Carthew rise from the thwart, shriek out aloud, 
and leap overboard; it seemed so vain a thing to dis- 
semble longer, to dally with the inevitable, to spin 
out some hundred seconds more of agonised suspense, 
with shame and death thus visibly approaching. But 
the indomitable Wicks persevered. His face was like 
a skull, his voice scarce recognisable; the dullest of 
men and officers (it seemed) must have remarked that 
tell-tale countenance and broken utterance. And still 
he persevered, bent upon certitude. 

“Nice place, Hong Kong?” he said. 

“Y’m sure I don’t know,” said the officer. “Only 
a day and a half there; called for orders and came 


straight on here. Never heard of such a beastly — 


cruise.” And he went on describing and lamenting the 
untoward fortunes of the Tempest. 

But Wicks and Carthew heeded him no longer. 
They lay back on the gunnel, breathing deep, sunk in 
a stupor of the body: the mind within still nimbly and 
agreeably at work, measuring the past danger, exulting 
in the present relief, numbering with ecstasy their ulti- 
mate chances of escape. For the voyage in the man- 
of-war they were now safe; yet a few more days of 
peril, activity, and presence of mind in San Francisco, 


and the whole horrid tale was blotted out; and Wicks ~ 


again became Kirkup, and Goddedaal became Carthew 
—men beyond all shot of possible suspicion, men who 
had never heard of the Flying Scud, who had never 
been in sight of Midway Reef. 

So they came alongside, under many craning heads 
of seamen and projecting mouths of guns; so they 


: 
’ 
atg 


A BAD BARGAIN 413 


climbed on board, somnambulous, and looked blindly 
about them at the tall spars, the white decks, and the 
crowding ship’s company, and heard men as from far 
away, and answered them at random. 

And then a hand fell softly on Carthew’s shoulder. 

“Why, Norrie, old chappie, where have you dropped 
from? All the world’s been looking for you. Don’t you 
know you’ve come into your kingdom?” 

He turned, beheld the face of his old schoolmate 
Sebright, and fell unconscious at his feet. 

The doctor was attending him, a while later, in Lieu- 
tenant Sebright’s cabin, when he came to himself. He 
opened his eyes, looked hard in the strange face, and 
spoke with a kind of solemn vigour. 

“Brown must go the same road,” he said; “now or 
never.” And then paused, and his reason coming 
to him with more clearness, spoke again: ‘What was 
I saying? Where am I? Who are you?” 

“T am the doctor of the Tempest,’ was the reply. 
“You are in Lieutenant Sebright’s berth, and you may 
dismiss all concern from your mind. Your troubles are 
over, Mr. Carthew.” 

“Why do you call me that?” he asked. “Ah, I 
remember—Sebright knew me! O!” and he groaned 
and shook. “Send down Wicks to me; I must see 
Wicks at once!” he cried, and seized the doctor’s wrist 
with unconscious violence. 

“All right,” said the doctor. ‘Let’s make a bargain. 
You swallow down this draught, and [ll go and fetch 
Wicks!” | 

And he gave the wretched man an opiate that laid 
him out within ten minutes and in all likelihood pre- 
Served his reason. 

It was the doctor’s next business to attend to Mac; 
and he found occasion, while engaged upon his arm, to 
make the man repeat the names of the rescued crew. 
It was now the turn of the captain, and there is no 
doubt he was no longer the man that we have seen; 
sudden relief, the sense of perfect safety, a square meal 


414 THE WRECKER 


and a good glass of grog, had all combined to relax his 
vigilance and depress his energy. 

“When was this done?” asked the doctor looking at 
the wound. 

“More than a week ago,” replied Wicks, thinking 
singly of his log. 

“Hey?” cried the doctor, and he raised his head and > 
looked the captain in the eyes. 

“T don’t remember exactly,” faltered Wicks. 

And at this remarkable falsehood, the suspicions of 
the doctor were at once quadrupled. | 

“By the way, which of you is called Wicks?” he 
asked easily. 

“What’s that?” snapped the captain, falling white 
as paper. 

“Wicks,” repeated the doctor; “which of you is he? 
that’s surely a plain question.” 

Wicks stared upon his questioner in silence. 

“Which is Brown, then?” pursued the doctor. 

“What are you talking of? what do you mean by 
this?” cried Wicks, snatching his half-bandaged hand 
away, so that the blood sprinkled the surgeon’s face. 

He did not trouble to remove it. Looking straight 
at his victim, he pursued his questions. “Why must 
Brown go the same way?” he asked. 

Wicks fell trembling on a locker. “Carthew’s told 
you,” he cried. 

“No,” replied the doctor, “he has not. But he and 
you between you have set me thinking, and I think 
there’s something wrong.” 

“Give me some grog,” said Wicks. “I’d rather tell 
than have you find out. I’m damned if it’s half as 
bad as what anyone would think.” : 

And with the help of a couple of strong grogs, the 
tragedy of the Flying Scud was told for the first time. 

It was a fortunate series of accidents that brought 
the story to the doctor. He understood and pitied 
the position of these wretched men, and came whole- 
heartedly to their assistance. He and Wicks and 


A BAD BARGAIN 415 


Carthew (so soon as he was recovered) held a hundred 
councils and prepared a policy for San Francisco. It 
was he who certified “Goddedaal” unfit to be moved 
and smuggled Carthew ashore under cloud of night; 
it was he who kept Wick’s wound open that he might 
sign with his left hand; he who took all their Chile 
silver and (in the course of the first day) got it con- 
verted for them into portable gold. He used his in- 
fluence in the wardroom to keep the tongues of the 
young officers in order, so that Carthew’s identifica- 
tion was kept out of the papers. And he rendered 
another service yet more important. He had a friend 
in San Francisco, a millionaire; to this man he pri- 
vately presented Carthew as a young gentleman come 
newly into a huge estate, but troubled with Jew debts 
which he was trying to settle on the quiet. The mil- 
lionaire came readily to help; and it was with his 
money that the wrecker gang was to be fought. What 
was his name, out of a thousand guesses? It was 
Douglas Longhurst. 

As long as the Currency Lasses could all disappear 
under fresh names, it did not greatly matter if the brig 
were bought, or any small discrepancies should be dis- 
covered in the wrecking. The identification of one of 
their number had changed all that. The smallest 
scandal must now direct attention to the movements of 
Norris. It would be asked how he, who had sailed in 
a schooner from Sydney, had turned up so shortly after 
in a brig out of Hong Kong; and from one question to 
another all his original shipmates were pretty sure 
to be involved. Hence arose naturally the idea of pre- 
venting danger, profiting by Carthew’s new-found 
wealth, and buying the brig under an alias; and it was 
put in hand with equal energy and caution. Carthew 
took lodgings alone under a false name, picked up 
Bellairs at random, and commissioned him to buy the 
wreck. 

“What figure, if you please?” the lawyer asked. 


416 THE WRECKER 


“T want it bought,” replied Carthew. “I don’t mind 
about the price.” 

“Any price is no price,” said Bellairs. ‘Put a name 
upon it.” 

“Call it ten thousand pounds then, if you like!” said 
Carthew. 

In the meanwhile, the captain had to walk the 
streets, appear in the consulate, be cross-examined by 
Lloyd’s agent, be badgered about his lost accounts, 
sign papers with his left hand, and repeat his lies to 
every skipper in San Francisco: not knowing at what 
moment he might run into the arms of some old friend 
who should hail him by the name of Wicks, or some 
new enemy who should be in a position to deny him 
that of Trent. And the latter incident did actually 
befall him, but was transformed by his stout counte- 
nance into an element of strength. It was in the 
consulate (of all untoward places) that he suddenly 
heard a big voice inquiring for Captain Trent. He 
turned with the customary sinking at his heart. 

“You ain’t Captain Trent!” said the stranger, fall- 
ing back. “Why, what’s all this? They tell me you're 
passing off as Captain Trent—Captain Jacob Trent 
a man I knew since I was that high.” 

“OQ, you’re thinking of my uncle as had the bank in 
Cardiff,” replied Wicks, with desperate aplomb. 

“T declare I never knew he had a nevvy!” said the 
stranger. 

“Well, you see he has!” says Wicks. 

“And how is the old man?” asked the other. 

“Fit as a fiddle,” answered Wicks, and was oppor- 
tunely summoned by the clerk. 

This alert was the only one until the morning of the 
sale, when he was once more alarmed by his interview 
with Jim; and it was with some anxiety that he at- 
tended the sale, knowing only that Carthew was to be 
represented, but neither who was to represent him nor 
what were the instructions given. I suppose Captain 
Wicks is a good life. In spite of his personal appearance 





ee 


A BAD BARGAIN 417 


and his own known uneasiness, I suppose he is 
secure from apoplexy, or it must have struck him there 
and then, as he looked on at the stages of that insane 
‘sale and saw the old brig and her not very valuable 
cargo knocked down at last to a total stranger for ten 
thousand pounds. 

It had been agreed that he was to avoid Carthew and 
above all Carthew’s lodging, so that no connection 
might be traced between the crew and the pseudony- 
mous purchaser. But the hour for caution was gone 
by, and he caught a tram and made all speed to 
Mission Street. 

Carthew met him in the door. 

_ “Come away, come away from here,” said Carthew; 
and when they were clear of the house, “All’s up!” he 
added. 

“O, you’ve heard of the sale then?” said Wicks. 

“The sale!” cried Carthew. “I declare I had for- 
gotten it.” And he told of the voice in the telephone, 
and the maddening question: Why did you want to 
buy the Flying Scud? 

This circumstance, coming on the back of the mon- 
strous improbabilities of the sale, was enough to have 
shaken the reason of Immanuel Kant. The earth 
seemed banded together to defeat them; the stones and 
the boys on the street appeared to be in possession of 
their guilty secret. Flght was their one thought. The 
treasure of the Currency Lass they packed in waist- 
belts, expressed their chests to an imaginary address 
in British Columbia, and left San Francisco the same 
afternoon, booked for Los Angeles. 

The next day they pursued their retreat by the 
Southern Pacific route, which Carthew followed on his 
way to England; but the other three branched off for 
Mexico. 


EPILOGUE 
TO WILL H. LOW 


| bis Feet LOW: The other day (at Manihiki of all 
plaees) I had the pleasure to meet Dodd. We 
sat some two hours in the neat little toy-like church, 
set with pews after the manner of Europe, and inlaid 
with mother-of-pearl in the style (I suppose) of New 
Jerusalem. The natives, who are decidedly the most 
attractive inhabitants of this planet, crowded round 
us in the pew, and fawned upon and patted us ; and 
here it was I put my questions, and Dodd answered 
me. 

I first carried him back to the night in Barbizon 
when Carthew told his story, and asked him what was 
done about Bellairs. It seemed he had put the matter 
to his friend at once, and that Carthew took it with 
an inimitable lightness. ‘“He’s poor, and I’m rich ne 
had said. “T can afford to smile at him. I go some- 
where else, that’s all—somewhere that’s far away and 
dear to get to. Persia would be found to answer, I 
fancy. No end of a place, Persia. Why not come with 
me?” And they had left the next afternoon for Con- 
stantinople, on their way to Teheran. Of the shyster, 
it is only known (by a newspaper paragraph) that he 
returned somehow to San Francisco and died in the 
hospital. 

“Now there’s another point,” said I. “There you 
are off to Persia with a millionaire, and rich yourself. 
How come you here in the South Seas, running a 
trader?” 

He said, with a smile, that I had not yet heard of 
Jim’s last bankruptcy. “I was about cleaned out once 

418 


EPILOGUE 419 


more,” he said; “and then it was that Carthew had 
this schooner built, and put me in as supercargo. It’s 
his yacht and it’s my trader; and as nearly all the 
expenses go to the yacht, I do pretty well. As for 
Jim, he’s right again: one of the best businesses, they 
say, in the West, fruit, cereals, and real estate; and he 
has a Tartar of a partner now—Nares, no less. Nares 
will keep him straight, Nares has a big head. They 
have their country-places next door at Saucelito, and 
I stayed with them time about, the last time I was 
on the coast. Jim has a paper of his own—I think he 
has a notion of being senator one of these days—and 
he wanted me to throw up the schooner and come and 
write his editorials. He holds strong views on the State 
Constitution, and so does Mamie.” 

“And what became of the other three Currency 
Lasses after they left Carthew?” I inquired. 

“Well, it seems they had a huge spree in the City 
of Mexico,” said Dodd; “and then Hadden and the 
Irishman took a turn at the gold fields in Venezuela, 
and Wicks went on alone to Valparaiso. There’s a 
Kirkup in the Chilean navy to this day; I saw the 
name in the papers about the Balmaceda war. Hadden 
soon wearied of the mines, and I met him the other 
day in Sydney. The last news he had from Venezuela, 
Mac had been knocked over in an attack on the gold 
train. So there’s only the three of them left, for Amalu 
scarcely counts. He lives on his own land in Maui, 
at the side of Hale-a-ka-la, where he keeps Godde- 
daal’s canary; and they say he sticks to his dollars, 
which is a wonder ina Kanaka. He had a considerable 
pile to start with, for not only Hemstead’s share but 
Carthew’s was divided equally among the other four 
—Mac being counted. 

“What did that make for him altogether?” I could 
not help asking, for I had been diverted by the number 
of calculations in his narrative. 

“One hundred and twenty-eight pounds nineteen 
shillings and eleven pence halfpenny,” he replied with 





420 THE WRECKER 


composure. “That’s leaving out what little he won at 
Van John. It’s something for a Kanaka, you know.” 

And about that time we were at last obliged to yield 
to the solicitations of our native admirers and go to 
the pastor’s house to drink green cocoanuts. The ship 
I was in was sailing the same night, for Dodd had been 
beforehand and got all the shell in the island; and 
though he pressed me to desert and return with him 
to Aukland (whither he was now bound to pick up 
Carthew) I was firm in my refusal. 

The truth is, since I have been mixed up with Havens 
and Dodd in the design to publish the latter’s nar- 
rative, I seem to feel no want for Carthew’s society. 
Of course I am wholly modern in sentiment, and think 
nothing more noble than to publish people’s private 
affairs at so much a line. They like it, and if they 
don’t, they ought to. But a still small voice keeps 
telling me they will not like it always, and perhaps 
not always stand it. Memory besides supplies me with 
the face of a pressman (in the sacred phrase) who 
proved altogether too modern for one of his neighbours, 
and | 

Qut nunc it per iter tenebricosum 
—nos precedens— 


as it were, marshalling us our way. I am in no haste 
to be that man’s successor. Carthew has a record as 
“a clane shot,” and for some years Samoa will be good 
enough for me. 

We agreed to separate, accordingly; but he took me 
on board his own boat with the hardwood fittings, and 
entertained me on the way with an account of his late 
visit to Butaritari, whither he had gone on an errand 
for Carthew, to see how Topelius was getting along, 
and, if necessary, to give him a helping hand. But 
Topelius was in great force, and had patronised and 
—well—out-manceuvred him. 

“Carthew will be pleased,” said Dodd; “for there’s 
no doubt they oppressed the man abominably when 


EPILOGUE 421 


they were in the Currency Lass. Its diamond cut dia- 
mond now.” 


This, I think, was the most of the news I got from 
my friend Loudon; and I hope I was well inspired, and 
have put all the questions to which you would be 
curious to hear an answer. 

But there is one more that I daresay you are burning 
to put to myself; and that is, what your own name 
is doing in this place, cropping up (as it were uncalled- 
for) on the stern of our poor ship? If you were not 
born in Arcadia, you linger in fancy on its margin; 
your thoughts are busy with the flutes of antiquity, 
with daffodils, and the classic poplar, and the footsteps 
of the nymphs, and the elegant and moving aridity of 
ancient art. Why dedicate to you a tale of a caste so 
modern ;—full of details of our barbaric manners and 
unstable morals;—full of the need and the lust of 
money, so that there is scarce a page in which the 
dollars do not jingle ;—full of the unrest and movement 
of our century, so that the reader is hurried from 
place to place and sea to sea, and the book is less a 
romance than a panorama;—in the end, as_blood- 
bespattered as an epic? 

Well, you are a man interested in all problems of 
art, even the most vulgar; and it may amuse you to 
hear the genesis and growth of The Wrecker. On 
board the schooner Equator, almost within sight of 
the Johnstone Islands (if anybody knows where these 
are) and on a moonlit night when it was a joy to be 
alive, the authors were amused with several stories of 
the sale of wrecks. The subject tempted them; and 
they sat apart in the alley-way to discuss its pos- 
sibilities. ‘What a tangle it would make,” suggested 
one, “if the wrong crew were aboard. But how to get 
the wrong crew there?”—‘“I have it!” cried the other; 
“the so-and-so affair!” For not so many months be- 
fore, and not so many hundred miles from where we 
were then sailing, a proposition almost tantamount to 


422 THE WRECKER 


that of Captain Trent had been made by a British 
skipper to some British castaways. 

Before we turned in, the scaffolding of the tale had 
been put together. But the question of treatment was 
as usual more obscure. We had long been at once 
attracted and repelled by that very modern form of the 
police novel or mystery story, which consists in begin- 
ning your yarn anywhere but at the beginning, and 
finishing it anywhere but at the end; attracted by its 
peculiar interest when done, and the peculiar dif- 
ficulties that attend its execution; repelled by that ap- 
pearance of insincerity and shallowness of tone, which 
seems its inevitable drawback. For the mind of the 
reader, always bent to pick up clues, receives no im- 
pression of reality or life, rather of an airless, elaborate 
mechanism and the book remains enthralling, but in- 
‘significant, like a game of chess, not a work of human 
art. It seemed the cause might lie partly in the abrupt 
attack; and that if the tale were gradually approached, 
some of the characters introduced (as it were) before- 
hand, and the book started in the tone of a novel of 
manners and experience briefly treated, this defect 
might be lessened and our mystery seem to inhere in 
life. The tone of the age, its movement, the mingling 
of races and classes in the dollar hunt, the fiery and 
not quite romantic struggle for existence with its 
changing trades and scenery, and two types in particu- 
lar, that of the American handy-man of business and 
that of the Yankee merchant sailor—we agreed to dwell 
upon at some length, and make the woof to our not 
very precious warp. Hence Dodd’s father, and Pinker- 
ton, and Nares, and the Dromedary picnics, and the 
railway work in New South Wales—the last an un- 
solicited testimonial from the powers that be, for the 
tale was half written before I saw Carthew’s squad 
toil in the rainy cutting at South Clifton, or heard from 
the engineer of his “young swell.” After we had in- 
vented at some expense of time this method of ap- 
proaching and fortifying our police novel, it occurred 


EPILOGUE 423 


to us it had been invented previously by some one else, 
and was in fact—however painfully different the re- 
sults may seem—the method of Charles Dickens in his 
later work. 

I see you staring. Here, you will say, is a prodigious 
quantity of theory to our halfpenny worth of police 
novel; and withal not a shadow of an answer to your 
question, 

Well, some of us like theory. Afte: so long a piece 
of practice, these may be indulged for a few pages. 
And the answer is at hand. It was plainly desirable, 
from every point of view of convenience and contrast, 
that our hero and narrator should partly stand aside 
from those with whom he mingles, and be but a pressed — 
man in the dollar hunt. Thus it was that Loudon | 
Dodd became a student of the plastic arts, and that 
our globe-trotting story came to visit Paris and look > 
in at Barbizon. And thus it is, dear Low, that your 
name appears in the address of this epilogue. 

For sure, if any person can here appreciate and read 
between the lines, it must be you—and one other, our 
friend. All the dominoes will be transparent to your 
better knowledge; the statuary contract will be to you 
a piece of ancient history; and you will not have now 
heard for the first time of the dangers of Roussillon. 
Dead leaves from the Bas Breau, echoes from Lave- 
nue’s and the Rue Racine, memories of a common past, 
let these be your bookmarkers as you read. And if 
you care for naught else in the story, be a little pleased 
to breathe once more for a moment the airs of our 
youth. 

THE END 





SS 8 2 2 2 2 8 2 2 2 ee Se 8 8 ee ee 8 8 ee 





RUBY hy, 


he 4, 


My 

Mag, Shisg 
wy = 

Mull ANG AW, 

Wy sly, SUG way "Ze 


nT MW ee eye 


4,5 {uM 


Gs % si ah 
Ww Gas nee 











Pe 

Imiit 
1 
Wy 


t 
' 
{ 
i 
q 
4 
4 
4 
¢ 
8 
e 
’ 
' 





30° : 





| ee ee Oe Oe | ee ee ee ee 


. 
C_} i Ba} 


| wa} 
HN 
wea 












LOOAAABAAAES) 
<A S . 
2" 





PACIFICVM jp 
cum infulis in eodem pafsim _f{par- 2 
StS, novifsima descriptio fe) 









€ we 4 all, Wig we 
Py YR UWS INE 
=e oe 


} 

igh —s 
Ma ay Fe Ge 
4 ah 


EMI NE 





An aeons mmm 



















Oe 


3 GETTY CENTER LIBRARY 


I 


q 
wma A SO oe au a aaa 


Milliaria communia 





















a sot. 45 
~f. Clarentius Hornung, Excudit — S 
eee 
or a : isthe 
Se ee ee 
{sna nas Sa np aes we sae np wea se euaeenseteaes @2@ 82 46:8 '8 S'S BS Ss @ 2 S BS 
FRE LEST RE EO DS Ea RE IIS LA LY EEE RAT LE CLAY PD PELL SD: A EDEL EOS SEE PBT CRESS DE A EE LBD 2 MORES REET 





ee 
ee, 
Sy ere 


Cae 
<a x, 


ee tea 
SA 


a 
ed 
* 


y 


rar 
ise 


ges = 


eS 
See 


So Fane eee 


Maik 


ih 


4 B14 
eit) 
Pu? y 


a 





